San Marzano Sessantanni Primitivo di Manduria Riserva 2019
£23.45
The wine
Complex aromas of ripe fruit, prune and cherry jam are complemented by hints of tobacco. Full bodied and rich in elegant tannins with a harmoniously balanced finish. Sessantanni means sixty years, which is the age of the bush vines behind it.
Sessantanni means sixty years, the age of the bush vines behind it, and it is the wine that made the cooperative's international reputation. Alberello vines of that age are free-standing, unwired, hand-harvested by necessity, and crop a fraction of what a trellised vineyard yields. Riserva status under Primitivo di Manduria requires at least two years of ageing, part of it in oak.
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.
