San Marzano Edda Lei Bianco 2022
£17.25
The wine
A distinctive blend delivering aromas of sun-ripened peach and mellow floral aromatics interwoven with delicate hints of vanilla. Fresh and beautifully balanced, the rounded palate is elegantly styled with a touch of minerality on the finish.
Edda is named after Edda Ciriolo, the mother of one of the cooperative's founders. The blend is unusual: Chardonnay for structure, Fiano for its waxy, nutty depth, and Moscatello Selvatico, a wild Muscat relative native to Puglia, for the floral top notes. Part of the wine is fermented and aged in oak, which accounts for the vanilla.
The producer
San Marzano
View all San Marzano winesIn 1962 nineteen growers in the village of San Marzano pooled their vineyards and founded a cooperative. More than sixty years later it draws on over 1,200 growers across Salento and the Manduria hills, and has become one of the most professional and forward-thinking houses in southern Italy.
The real asset is the old vines. Much of Puglia is still planted to alberello, the free-standing bush training the Greeks brought to the region, in which each vine stands alone without wires or posts. It cannot be machine harvested and it crops very little, but the fruit it gives is concentrated in a way trellised vines rarely match. Some of the plots behind Sessantanni and Anniversario 62 are well past sixty years old, and the names say exactly that.
The range is built on the three native reds of the heel of Italy: Primitivo, genetically identical to Zinfandel; Negroamaro, whose name means roughly black and bitter; and the near-forgotten Susumaniello. Passion and competence are the stated bywords, and the run of awards suggests they are more than a slogan.
