Southern Italy

he south of Italy is warm and dry but still produces many excellent wines in the best DOC. The region’s food is very different to the north with more fish and seafood, fresh vegetables and particularly tomato-based dishes. Naples is the original home of pizza which has been made there for possibly hundreds of years. Further south, the land gets flatter but remains fertile with ancient volcanic activity having an influence on soils. Sicily is even impressing the world with wines made from grapes grown on the high-altitude volcanic soils of Mount Etna. The most important wine of Abruzzo are the red wines of DOC Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. The Montepulciano grape is widely planted across Southern Italy and is known for naturally high acidity, grippy tannins and floral, herbaceous notes with the sweet aroma of fresh tobacco becoming more dominant in older wines.

Primitivo is a dark-skinned grape known for producing dark, tannic wines, particularly Primitivo di Manduria. A classic Primitivo wine has high alcohol and tannins and is intensely flavoured and deeply coloured. A certain bitterness can be found in Primitivo which, combined with its firm tannins, means that it needs a few years of age to be at its best. There have been long-running debates about the variety’s geographical origins but Primitivo’s modern-day home is certainly now in southern Italy, principally Puglia. It probably arrived there from the coastal vineyards of nearby Croatia, where it is also still grown today.

Among the white wines, there are two major wines including the dry white wines made from Greco and Fiano grapes, both of which are suited to the limestone soils and warmer climate that’s cooled by the Mediterranean Sea. These can be powerful and rich from high natural sugar levels with low to moderate acidity. In Sicily, Nero D’Avola is a popular red variety while Zibibbo (the local name for Muscat) makes white wines that can range from bone dry to sweet. Sicily is also known for Marsala, a fortified wine that was produced in the style of Madeira to be transported on the long sea journey to the north of Europe. Marsala can range from dry to sweet and are fortified to around 17 to 18% ABV.