San Marzano Il Pumo Primitivo 2025
£10.75
The wine
An intense aroma of plum, cherry and spice, with hints of rosemary and vanilla. Full bodied yet soft and balanced, full of ripe fruit flavours in an easy-drinking style that has made it one of the great Puglian staples.
Primitivo is genetically identical to Zinfandel, a fact only established by DNA analysis in the 1990s, and both trace back to the Croatian grape Tribidrag. In Salento it ripens early and unevenly, which is why the bunches are often picked in stages. This is the everyday bottling and one of the most dependable Puglian reds on any shelf.
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.
