Last week, the Short Cellar took you to Sicily, an island with a 2,500-year-old history of winemaking which (paradoxically) can now claim to be an up-and-coming and increasingly trendy. I then received a message from Old Prof, one of the frequent commentators on this website. The aged academic asked “How are the wines of Sicilia different than those of Puglia (or not)?”
Puglia (also known as Apulia in English) is the region that forms the stiletto heel of Italy’s boot. Although Puglia is only separated from Sicily by a few hundred miles, their wine making styles are night and day. In fact, understanding these differences will teach you the one great secret of wine: people don’t make wine — geography does.
Sicily is mountainous. Higher vineyards tend to be cooler, creating more elegant wines, especially better white wines. Sicily’s volcanic soil also gives many of its wines a thrilling minerality. Most importantly however, high altitudes create broad temperature variations from day to night, and this daily pendulum swing gives grapes complexity of flavour.
Puglia, on the other hand, is the flattest territory in Italy — it has broad, hot plains and low-lying hills. The good soil and warm weather make it easy to cultivate vineyards; in fact, it is too easy. Fertile vineyards give each vine many grapes, but this plenitude dilutes the overall flavour (it’s much better to have “low-yields”). This is why Puglia became famous for producing lakes of mediocre table wine. Quantity destroyed the quality.
But Puglia’s not all bad. Its oven-like climate is particularly good at certain kinds of wine, particularly powerful but inexpensive red wines made from the Primitivo grape in the subregion of Manduria. In California, Primitivo is better known as Zinfandel, and the U.S. wineries there use it to create a juicy and peppery red. But in Puglia, Primitivo is baked by the sun until it is rich and concentrated — the wine equivalent of jet fuel.
My favourite Primitivo is the Pichierri 2006 “Tradizione del Nonno” Primitivo ($24.95, Vintages #718130, currently out of stock). This is a good substitute for Amarone at half the price: its flavours come in an overwhelming but joyous flood of raisins, spicy and figs. It has great body and a little sweetness, but it isn’t as graceful as a decent Amarone — the name “Grandfather’s Tradition” shows that this is a rustic and old-school wine, made for men, not boys. 90/100.
The Pichierrie is sometimes difficult to find, so another good choice is the Memoria 2006 Primitivo di Manduria ($14.95 [Ed. note: No longer available], Vintages #687210). This wine highlights Puglia’s true strength: producing good-value red wine with a delicious fruity profile and lots of velvety texture. This is an excellent wine to try if you like California’s Zinfandels, although you will immediately notice Puglia’s distinctive raisin-like flavour. Not a wine for aging — just for enjoying. 89/100.
Matthew Sullivan is a civil litigator in Toronto. He writes a weekly blog entry here on lawandstyle.ca. The Short Cellar column also appears in the print edition of Precedent. Matthew can be reached at matthew@lawandstyle.beta-site.ca. Follow along on Twitter: @shortcellar.