 Hello, welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Orkey. Hi, I'm Sharon Tan. Welcome back to the show today. We are going to be talking about wines from the Salento Peninsula. We actually recently just got back from filming a travel log style video in the Salento Peninsula. It was supported by several producers and we're going to taste some of their wines today. I'm actually pretty excited. We have a couple of producers here that we actually visited. We got these bottles from Salento Wine Shop, so I want to thank them for sending them over. Any thoughts you want to give on our trip in the Salento Peninsula? Well, the Salento Peninsula era was used to be known for making lots of about wine in the past, but there is a very strong and determined quality revolution going on right now, and we discovered many gems that are worth sticking out. Yeah, in the past known for bulk wine, table wine, or plush easy drinking reds, but we did find some serious examples. We have two interesting producers here today actually, so funny because we have like kind of a basic everyday type wine, table wine, and we have more of a reserve wine. So let's get started. We're going to start out with the the Tenuta Emera Quale Rosso Salento IGP 2017. This is a table wine, actually meant to be a fun easy drinking wine. It's kind of going to get a flat little bottom there. Tenuta Emera, it's owned by Claudio Quorta who has actually three wineries, one in one in Campania called San Paolo. Tenuta Emera is in Salento and then they also have another winery called Cantina Moro, so it only makes one wine. So I know it's kind of confusing. That's the world of wine. Quale is named after his daughter, Alessandra Quorta. This is kind of her idea of making a simple everyday wine. This is made from merlot, primitivo, and negro amato. If you're experienced with their wines, you want to... So by the Alessandra word, this wine is meant to be like a democratic wine where she believes that wine, good wine, high quality wine, should be accessible to everybody, which is the reason why she made this wine. I love the entire portfolio, Claudio Quorta, because of the diversity. There are quite different styles and characters and nearly every single wine, among three wineries. And I think it's meant to be that way to reflect the teua, where it comes from, and also to provide different tiers of wine for different people with different budget and preferences. So I think they almost got the whole range of, I would say, the whole wine market cover with the entire really big portfolio. I'm actually a big fan of... I'm not a big fan of Greco de Tufo, but the Greco de Tufo from San Paolo is fantastic. Tenuta Emera, they focus mostly on negro amato, primitiva di mendoria. Let's get started here. I'm going to have a deep color. I think this clocks in at 13 and a half alcohol. Kind of like... Vanilla sweet spice. Not a super dark color. Yeah, not super dark color. Spicy, spicy, but you get this vanilla sweetness to it too. Red fruit, again, this is supposed to be... This is not supposed to be a serious black buster wine. This is supposed to be more kind of like a table wine. More grapefruit first on the nose, and then usually get a little bit of black. Very brown and plush on the palate. It's a nice, like, foot wine. It's tangy. The tannins are soft, so people that aren't... that people don't like the dryest, stringency tannins, it's going to be easy drinking. But I would say there's enough seriousness here to... The white people are not going to keep this off the table, right? I think it's just a very balanced, very nice drinking wine because you can feel the plushness and the sweet fruit on the front palate, but what makes it kind of like serious and balanced is you get a tanniness on the finish. For me, it's really enjoyable. This is like a pasta wine, tomato sauce wine. Really enjoyable. For me, I'm like kind of like an 87-point range, which I think is very nice for a wine that's supposed to be under $10, easy to drink, no fuss. Yeah, if tasting this at a competition, I probably would give it a bronze for the well-balanced, characteristic. Next, we have more of a reserve specialty, geek wine. We have the Paloma di Archangelo Il Vino Malvasia Nerda 2015, the Paloma winery. We spent time with Miquelis, the third-generation winemaker in the village of Coutrofiano. If I... Yeah, I've got that right. They used to focus on bulk wines. They're actually made and labeled. It's called Matushko, which I thought was funny, and their dialect Matushko means get drunk. That's kind of their basic wine. Making easy, approachable wines. This is more of their reserve wine. What are your experiences with Paloma? I'm very excited for Miquelis to be leading the winery forward, because he's young, a very passionate guy and very intentional, you know, exactly. Like when he makes his wine, he knows what he wants to achieve, he knows what he wants to do with the vineyard moving forward, and you can see the quality development that he brings. So, Malvasia Nerda, this grape is usually blended into Negromaro in Siliccia Salantino, I think in the Salento IGTs, the Salento DOC as well. I think this is slightly off-dry, if I remember. 15% alcohol. It is a big boy wine. Malvasia Nerda is a very interesting variety. It's kind of floral. It's a red floral grape. I often find that a nose is pretty aromatic. It makes you, which fool you into thinking that it's going to be like a light wine, but often when you taste it, you feel the alcohol and you feel the the tenant. So, let's see. So, there's browning on the edges. Yeah, it's a little bit of color to it now. It's like, you definitely smell the red, like, kind of plum, the real plummy. Yeah, I find that the strut here is a little bit too worse, the compost side now. A little bit of browning on the edges. There's a little bit of Mediterranean oil. A little bit of pepper, I would have to say too. Yeah. Do you get any of the floral aspects that we get in Malvasia Nerda? I do. I do. I still do. Yeah. Pretty nice. Is it too cooked? Is it too ripe? No, the ripeness immediately comes through, but there is a balancing factor to it with the floral note and yeah. Let's give this a go. I think the entry pallet, the front pallet and the pallet, it's wonderful, almost silky, and then the tannins kicks in on the finish and also it shows the ripeness of this wine. There's a touch of residual sugar. I think this is about four grams. So, maybe it's a little bit less than that. It's big wine. People that like the big California wines are going to like this wine, surprisingly silky and big, but you know what, it's surprisingly tannins coming out of the bite. Yeah, I think that's what makes Malvasia Nerda very interesting. We have tasted this before. For me, this is not my style of wine, the big humongous red. There's a lot of people that are going to like this wine. I think most people are going to say it's easily like an 88, 89 point type of wine. For my personal pallet, I think it's very well made. I respect it tremendously. I usually don't like those bigger, heavier reds, but man, this shows the polish of what Salento fruit can give you and what the winemaking can do to round out the process. Yeah, and most importantly, Malvasia Nerda is a very interesting wine grape that you should definitely see go. So guys, I'm going to put the link to our travel video through Salento, through Traveling through the Food and Wine Salento. I think that you're going to really enjoy it. I'll put it in the description box. Check it out. And if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, exotic wine travel. We'll see you at our next episode.