Wine of the Week 4/6/21

Mottura Primitivo del Salento 2019

Regularly $16.99/On Sale for $10.96

Pasquale Mottura founded his eponymous winery in 1927 in Tuglie, a small town in the southern part of the Salento Peninsula, the very southern-most tip of Italy.  Nearly 100 years later, a fourth generation of Motturas still run the winery, one of the oldest and most respected in Puglia.  For the winery’s first several decades, the wine was shipped north in huge, iron-ringed barrels to be bottled in Rome or Milan, but in the 1960s, Mottura decided to control its supply chain to keep quality high, and became one of the first wineries in the area to bottle its own wine.

The winery is still in the original building, a beautiful late 19th century farmhouse in Baroque style with a capacious cellar.  

Primitivo landed in Italy in the late 1800s (probably from Croatia) and became an important variety in the hot, dry, southern region of Puglia. Here it was named from the Latin word, primativus, meaning "first to ripen."  No one knew Primitivo and Zinfandel were the same grape until 1994 when DNA profiling at UC Davis finally revealed the link. The grape goes by the name of Tribidrag in Croatia and is a parent to Plavac Mali.

This Primitivo has the characteristic dark fruit, but is very easy to drink.  A perfect accompaniment to fuller meals or cooler nights around the firepit.

Puglia has been the home of some considerable experimentation in winemaking in the last few years, but take advantage of this deep discount to discover one of the classic grapes that put Puglia on the map, and made their wine a staple of Italian wine consumption!