A Mano Negroamaro 2024
£12.25
The wine
Negroamaro is Salento’s great native red, and A Mano’s version shows exactly why it deserves the spotlight. The fruit comes from a single old vineyard in the heart of Salice Salentino, dry-farmed and carefully trellised to shade the sensitive grapes from the fierce southern sun.
Deep ruby in the glass, it opens with crushed black berries, dark cherry and spice, followed by a pretty floral note. Full and rich on the palate yet sleek and elegant, it finishes with a gentle, lingering spice and no heavy oak to mask the fruit.
A characterful, food-loving red for spiced sausages, meatballs and pasta or roast chicken. Serve at cool room temperature.
The producer
A Mano
View all A Mano winesA Mano is the work of Mark Shannon, a Californian winemaker, and his partner Elvezia Sbalchiero, an Italian wine professional, who fell for the deep south of Italy and made Salento their home. Together they did something few thought possible: they turned humble Primitivo into one of Puglia’s most celebrated grapes.
Their approach is refreshingly simple. They pay properly for the very best fruit, much of it from gnarled alberello bush vines between seventy and a hundred years old, and let that quality speak for itself. The name captures the spirit of the place, A Mano meaning “by hand” in Italian, a nod to the care behind every bottle.
With the best part of two decades of Puglian vintages behind them, Mark and Elvezia have set a benchmark that growers across the region now follow. The A Mano Primitivo is the calling card: deep, spiced and supple, rich with warm Mediterranean fruit yet finished with a thoroughly modern sense of balance. This is southern Italy at its most generous, and its most polished.
