Negroamaro

Negroamaro is the dominant red grape of Puglia, in the heel of Italy, and it is concentrated on the flat hot Salento peninsula between two seas. The name is usually read as black and bitter, from the Latin niger and the Italian amaro, though it may simply be black repeated in Latin and Greek. The bitter finish makes the first reading feel right.

It handles drought and heat as well as any Italian variety, which is why it survived on a peninsula with almost no shade and very little rain. For most of the twentieth century its job was to be shipped north in bulk to add colour and alcohol to thin wines in Piedmont and beyond, and to France. Very little of it was bottled under its own name before the 1990s.

The wine is deep, soft and warm, with black cherry, dried plum, tobacco and a bitter almond edge, moderate tannin and moderate acidity. Salice Salentino is the best known appellation and usually blends it with malvasia nera, which lifts the aroma. It also makes a substantial dry rosato, one of Italy's oldest rose traditions and still one of its best.