Negroamaro

Negroamaro is the workhorse red of the Salento peninsula, the heel of Italy, and the name is generally read as black and bitter — though it may be a doubling of the word black in Latin and Greek, both languages having been spoken in the region.

It gives a deeply coloured, full-bodied wine with black cherry, plum and dried fig, over a savoury base of dried herbs, tobacco, leather and earth, and it finishes with a characteristic bitterness that the name captures exactly. Acidity is moderate, tannins are ripe, and alcohol runs high in a region with very little rain and a great deal of sun.

For most of the twentieth century Puglia produced enormous volumes of Negroamaro for blending, shipped north to strengthen wines from cooler regions. Its own identity emerged only as the region shifted towards estate bottling from the 1990s.

Salice Salentino is the best-known appellation, where it is usually blended with a small proportion of Malvasia Nera for perfume. Copertino and Squinzano are others.

It also makes a considerable quantity of rosato, and Puglia's pink wines are among Italy's most substantial — deep in colour, dry and savoury, and traditionally drunk as a table wine rather than an aperitif.

The old vines are trained as alberello bushes close to the ground, which shades the fruit and reduces water loss, an adaptation to a climate that is among the hottest and driest in Italy.