Primitivo di Manduria

The Primitivo di Manduria is a DOC wine, whose production is strictly permitted only in the provinces of Brindisi and Taranto.
The rediscovery of the primitivo di Manduria is happened when the producers of wine from the Salento area have realized that the variety of the primitive is the same of the Californian Zinfandel. And so, if Californian winemakers were able to give pride to this wine from premature aging, they were also capable.

 To achieve this goal, they focused on the classic version of the original, a dry wine, characterized by ruby red and intense color, austere, robust and full bodied, natural repository of over 14 degrees of alcohol.
But what unites our Manduria to the Californian Zifandel?

The history of the primitive begins at Gioia del Colle with a priest, Don Francesco Filippo Indelicati, who noted, in his wines cultivation, that one matured before the others, which gave sweet and tasty bunches, ready to be harvested already in August. For this reason, this wine was called “primitive”, which means primitive. The primitive began to spread throughout the territory of Murgia Barese, and from there to Manduria, on the occasion of the wedding between the Countess Sabina di Altamura and Tommaso Schiavoni Tafuri.

Here the primitive found fertile ground, especially in on the strechtes along the sea, where the climate causes a natural drying of the fruit on the tree. It was precisely the family Schiavoni, which began to bottle the wine. The story deepens in 1967, when a Californian professoti visited Apulia, and tasted a glass of primitive, noticing that the color, aroma and flavor of that rustic wine reminded him the Zifandel. Everything suggested that the vine had come to California from Puglia, but the studies and careful analysis established that the progenitor of Zifandel, and probably also of our primitivo, is a Croatian wine with an unpronounceable name, the Crljenak.

If you want to buy the Primitivo di Manduria, or if you want wine buy online, you can look at the site Italian Wine Selection, an online wine shop specializing in Italian wines and sparkling wines.