When you have 2,000 years of winemaking history you’re bound to have some ups and downs. Happily, this region in the south of Italy has a new focus on quality.
Itay: Puglia, Part 1
There is, to be sure, an Old Guard, an aristocracy of wine producers. And there is also an anti-establishment. We find all around the world resourceful and innovative winemakers who are breaking away from the past and from certain traditions. One happy result is the vast selection we now have of high caliber, gently priced wines from regions that are relatively new to the wine world or from older regions that have reinvented themselves.
Puglia, sometimes called Apulia in English, is just such a region. The heel of the boot of Italy, it has a history going back to when the Greeks colonized coastal areas around the Mediterranean. Grapes have been grown and wine has been produced here for more than two thousand years. Whatever the ancients may have thought of the wine, it did not fare well in recent generations when the area became an exporter of vast quantities of undistinguished blending wines.
Now, like a number of other European regions, the winemakers here have shifted their focus to quality rather than just quantity. Make no mistake; Puglia is still a breathtakingly large production area. It makes almost twice as much wine as all of Australia, and if it were a country it would be the world’s seventh largest producer. It’s big in other agricultural ways, producing more than half of Italy’s olive oil and 80 percent of Europe’s pasta.
The intriguing new development is that at least part (less than 3 percent, but still quite significant) of this huge output consists of classified, premium wines. As a sign of what is happening, consider that Antinori, the famed Tuscan producer, owns the Tormaresca estate. (The wholesaler Remy Amerique includes the Tormaresca line in its New York portfolio.) Kendall-Jackson of California has also invested in Puglia. When this kind of money and talent flow into a wine region, you can bet that interesting wines will be flowing out. Something more than grape juice is fermenting.
The Pugliese reputation has not caught up to this reality, and this gap in perception works for the consumer. Wines from Puglia can be a bargain compared to wines from Tuscany and Piedmont. So much for those old spaghetti reds from the south of Italy.
Negroamaro is a native red grape whose name means “black bitter.” I tried a Tormaresca blend of 80 percent negroamaro and 30 percent cabernet sauvignon from the 2003 vintage. It does not come with a regional appellation, and it is clearly intended at $10 to be an easy, everyday wine. In a sense it is rustic—earthy, spicy, plummy—but don’t take that to mean harsh. The wine is smooth, rounded and balanced, and an attractive herbal quality lends itself to food pairing without a lot of fuss. From spaghetti on up.
Aglianico is a grape I hadn’t tasted, at least knowingly. It is sometimes added to other wines, including some from Chianti. But I had been curious about the grape on its own merit. It’s been around since that ancient Greek colonization, but does not have much of an international reputation and is usually associated only with the region of Basilicata, a small, poor, southern province.
It was worth waiting for. Bocca di Lupo 2002, from the Castel del Monte appellation, was a delight. It is a strong, structured wine, powerful in its aromas and on the palate. Serene and velvety, it offers a graceful, rhythmic drinking experience from the first concentrated scents of berries and ripe red fruits all the way through to a muscular finish. This grape has classic qualities of sophistication and complexity, or at least this winemaker brought out those desirable traits. You’ll wonder, as I did, why this grape has been so overlooked. I’ll certainly pay attention when it comes my way, or more likely I’ll take the trouble to seek it out. Tormaresca’s Bocca di Lupo sells for $28 a bottle—a reasonable price for a truly impressive wine. It is excellent now and should be even better with a few years of bottle aging.
