There is so much character and beauty in this wine! The high-toned aromas summon thoughts of sautéed plums, cherry jam, sweet saddle leather, loose tea and puréed blackcurrants and those sweetly ripe Puglian flavours make welcome the mouth-watering acidity. The palate is wonderfully generous and full-bodied, but favours fleshy succulence and fine-grained opulence rather than tannic heft with more of those sunny flavours given further complexity with notes of sweet tobacco, wood polish, cigar box spices, fruit-drenched wood and something mysteriously evocative, like the old library in a faded stately home. It leaves you in no doubt as to the wine’s place of origin – the flavours guide you there as if you were following a GPS signal. This is downright delicious! A rambunctious, heart-on-its-sleeve bargain of a wine, which comes with our highest recommendation. 14% alc. A blend of Negroamaro (90%) and Malvasia Nera (10%) aged for two years in wooden barrels and then in bottle. Drink now – 2024.

Press review:

JancisRobinson.com (Tamlyn Currin): “Leather and vanilla and cherry tobacco and raspberry-leaf tea. Everything on the nose, a potpourri, tumbles into the palate like dry petals and spices and leaves blown by a wood-fire-smoky wind into your chest. Tender tannins, honest, heart-felt, gentle. But by no means frail or understated. This wine has soaked up all the sunshine of southern Italy and melded it into melting prunes, marshmallows by an open fire under the stars of a warm night, the crisp of pork fat caramelised onto the spit, the smell of a fat cigar, vanilla pod, cherry wood. The Perfect Christmas Wine, the tannins fine enough for ham or turkey, the sweetness of fruit robust enough for cranberries and bacon and butternut, the acidity bright enough and the spice dense anything for anything else you care to throw at it. Very Good Value. Drink now-2020-2025.” 16.5 points

Customer comments:

“Really, really big fan of this. Loved it.” - Mr O.M.