San Marzano Il Pumo Salice Salentino 2024
£10.45
The wine
An intense bouquet of cherry, savoury plum and spicy notes combined with an attractive hint of Mediterranean herbs. Full bodied and warm, with a generous flavour and a pleasantly fresh finish.
Salice Salentino is one of the oldest appellations in Puglia and requires a base of Negroamaro, here softened by Malvasia Nera, a dark-skinned Malvasia that adds perfume and a rounder texture. The soils around Salice are red iron-rich clay over limestone, which holds water through the summer drought and is a large part of why the region can ripen fruit without the wines becoming raisined.
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.
