In short. Two black grapes carry Apulian wine abroad: Primitivo, grown around Manduria and Gioia del Colle, and Negroamaro, the backbone of the Salento. Both spent most of the twentieth century being shipped north to strengthen other people’s wine. Primitivo is genetically the same grape as Zinfandel.
If you have drunk Apulian wine outside Italy, it was almost certainly one of these two. They are not interchangeable — and the fastest way to understand Apulian wine is to put a glass of each side by side.
🍇 Primitivo
The name comes from its one distinguishing habit: it ripens before almost every other grape, often by the end of August. It grows across the lower Salento, but its famous expression is Primitivo di Manduria, in the province of Taranto, where the vines sit in the iron-red soil the locals call terra rossa. It also does well on the higher ground at Gioia del Colle.
In the glass it is deep ruby with violet lights: ripe red fruit — cherry, plum — with spice behind it and a touch of vanilla when it has been aged in wood. It is full and round in the mouth, with soft tannins and a long finish. It goes with what it grew up next to: orecchiette with a meat ragù, aged cheeses, grilled red meat.
The same grape, taken to California in the nineteenth century, is Zinfandel. The DNA is identical; the wines are not, because the place is not.
🍇 Negroamaro
The grape of the Salento, and the base of most of its DOC reds — Brindisi, Copertino, Alezio. It is old: it goes back several centuries before Christ, and it has carried other names along the way — Niuru Maru, Mangiaverde, Uvacane. The name reads as black and bitter, and the finish does carry a pleasant bitterness that is part of its character.
Both were once somebody else’s wine. Until a few decades ago Primitivo and Negroamaro did the same job: vino da taglio, blending wine, sent north — and sometimes to France — to lift the strength and colour of thinner production. Two grapes that now make some of the most distinctive reds in Italy spent generations arriving in someone else’s bottle, unnamed.
And the rosé. Negroamaro makes some of the best rosés in Italy — coral pink, dry, with more body than a Provençal rosé. In the Salento it is drunk right through a meal, and in summer it is the smarter order.
🗺️ The rest of the map
Reducing Apulian wine to two grapes would be a mistake. The region also grows Nero di Troia — the one behind Castel del Monte — along with Aleatico, Aglianico, Bombino nero, Fiano, Greco, Malvasia both white and black, Moscato bianco and Sangiovese, besides the international varieties that have naturalised here.
Six geographical indications cover the region: Puglia, Salento, Valle d’Itria, Tarantino, Murgia and Daunia. The full list of Apulian DOC wines is here.
That Puglia bottles serious wine at all is a recent story. Two generations ago it was made at home, in a stone palmento, with the grapes trodden barefoot: we have written about that week in the grape harvest the old way.
