 to exotic wine travel. I am your host Matthew Horky. Hi, I'm Sharon Tan. And we have a special guest here today. We're here with Stefano Spagnolo of Salento Wine Shop and Salento Wine Tour. We'll get into that in a second. So we're here in Puglia on the Salento Peninsula. We're gonna taste through three wines from indigenous grapes from the area. We got these wines from Bottega de Nono. That's right. Yeah, it's the physical wine shop of Salento Wine Shop as well. So let's get into the first wine show. We have the Tanuta Rubino Sussummanuello Rosata. This is 2018. Tell me about Sussummanuello. Okay, so Sussummaniello is an incredible and out-topped grape that you find in the Brindisi area. Brindisi is an important city in the north part, north east part of Salento. Sussummaniello is an old grape that was used in ancient times for the people that stay in this area. Now we use it from this wine, the Tanuta Rubino, and we use it to obtain the great rosé wine in this case and the other Torretesta wine that is a great, great red wine. It's starting to get trendy here again, Sussummanello. Yeah, now trendy, yeah. In fact, many, many wineries that use it now, Sussummaniello, to produce a new label for this grape. So basically, with these rosés from Salento, you're gonna get a deeper color. Don't think Provence Rosé, right? It's kind of like a pomegranate color. What are you picking up on the nose? Oh, I like the nose. What do you think? There's a little bit of subtle floral note to it. I'm getting a lot of strawberries. It's a spice, actually. Yeah, it's a spice wine, yeah. Because you find here a medium time of maceration of the grape, I think that is eight hours, and so it's necessary to extract all of the most important polyphenol compound in this grape. Well, let's give this a go here. More of a full-body type rosé. Yeah. Got some bite, some fruit. These rosés from Salento, you're not gonna get this sharp acidity that you're gonna get from Provence Rosé. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they're still juicy. What else do you think? I think it's not about the acidity that makes it fresh. It is more of the flavor. So you get this citrus flavor that makes it fresh. Well, at the same time you get a lot of the knowledge, the flavors are really busting in your mouth, and then there's a nice spicy finish to it. What kind of quality is this? Like, do you enjoy it? Yeah, I enjoy it, especially I think this is a good way for it. Maybe some dried meat, actually. Yeah, so the characteristic of this one is the long persistence in mouth. So this is the characteristic of all of the Salento Rosé wine. For me, this is type of wine that's gonna be like a high 80s point type of score, like an 89 point. It's not for people that like Provence or crisp rosé. Somebody like me that wants something a little bit meatier, a little bit beefier. But I'm really enjoying it a lot. Yeah, I think it's a good foot wine. The next wine we have here is... Where's the producer here? Can't you tell him? Yeah, yeah, it's a terrible winery. The Primitivo Salento 2016. This is made from Primitivo. Anybody from America, you'll know it as Zinfandel. And then people that follow us and watch our Croatian videos, you'll know it as Stena Kastalenski. It's a tribute drag. This is an IGP wine, it's not... Yeah, it's an IGP because the wine is produced using the grape that was from Manduria. Teruaro, Manduria land. And was produced in the south part of Salento, so it's only EGT and non-DOC wine. Well, tell me about the scrape a little bit more here. Yeah, this is the land of Primitivo. Yeah, so yeah, this is the land of Primitivo. Primitivo is a strong, it's the most important grape that you find in Salento. So Primitivo di Manduria is one of the first DOC created in Puglia. And this is a characteristic grape because you find all of the stronger of the sun, all of the power of the sun in flavor because the flavor is very, very, very strong in your nose. And you're gonna see 16% alcohol, so we're not messing around here. And you smell the sun, right? What I appreciate the most is, yeah, you feel the energy of the sun, but you don't get this raising, no prune, it's still pretty fresh. It's not like, like bright plum, but not prune. So that's a really lovely freshness to it. This is a, this smells lovely. I like the nose a lot. So what do you get? So you get some dark fruits, maybe some plum, not prune. Plum and dried flowers, kind of like dried orchid, dried violet. A little bit of brown spice to me. Probably a bit of cumin. Okay, let's see what, let's see what. Yeah, so it's necessary to attend many minutes to open the important secondary flower. Yeah, all these wines that we just opened, but we're gonna have them with me later, which Stefano's cooking up works. Yeah, but it's good, it's stronger, but you find the acidity that I like in the wine, so. It's a little bit more dried fruit on the palate than I expect on nose. Yeah, I think it's also tool as the more oxidative in style. You get a little bit of the notes in the mouth, but it's not, it's not faulty. It's too dry, it's really nicely, lots of fruit. Full body, mouth coding, round tannins, it's not super tannic, round. It's very front loading on the front palate, you get a lot of fruit. What were you up for quality for this? Are you enjoying this? Sometimes primitivos can be a little bit tough for you. I think for drinking now I'm pretty high up on that, but I'm not sure how far you ate, but for now I don't even mind going to like 89, 90 points. For me I'm at 90 points on this, I think it's lovely primitivo. It's so funny, we judged primitivos last year, we didn't want to do it, and the primitivo flight ended up being the best. I mean, they've been doing it for a long time. It has a very nice kind of like dried tobacco on the finish as well, which makes it look perfect. Anything else you want to add? No, so this is a product of my, my, my friends. That is a new, new product because the wine is younger, so it's necessary to obtain many other years to improve this wine. But it's, I'm impressed, I mean, I'm not always excited about primitivo. It's a nice little wine. I really look forward to having it for dinner, seriously. Let's move on here. You better finish up, sister. So we have a big boy wine here. This is the Fuedi di Guagnano, right? Yes, Fuedi di Guagnano. It's situated in the most important city of Salento, that was called the city of Negromaro, that is Guagnano. So this is narrow divaluto, so this is like pure black. Yeah, pure black, black velvet. So because the color of these wines is so dark. So this is a 2013 Negromaro. Stefano, talk to me about this grape. Yeah, so Negromaro is the most famous grape produced in Salento. So it's important because Negromaro was used for another important DOC of Puglia, that is Salisce Salentino. It's the name of another village near Guagnano, so it's called Salisce Salentino. This is a reserve wine, right? Yeah, this is a reserve wine because normally with Negromaro it's possible to obtain a long time of aging. I think that is possible to have 20 or more other years to aging. Let's give this a smell. To me on the first dose, when I smell this immediately, I haven't got deep into it yet. I think that if you're going to like sensual Tuscan wines, you're going to kind of like this nose. Possibly, it's really quite extractive, licorice, very savory. I get a lot of dry meat kind of smell on the nose. Meaty is the Negromaro. What else, what else are you picking on? But on the palate, sorry, I drank it already. I got a little bit too excited. The palate is surprisingly quite light and quite brown. It doesn't taste as punchy on the nose as it is. You know that the characteristic of Negromaro is the spicy taste and you find tobacco notes, for example. That is the characteristic of Negromaro. Pepper on the palate. Pepper, black pepper, yeah, yeah, black pepper. This, we just came from Chetna of the Pop. Okay, I'm not going to say it acts like a GSM. But don't you think it has like the meaty peppery notes? Yeah, but it doesn't have the fruit of the same fruit profile. It's more meaty and savory. But if you're talking about structure, actually you got something there. I think it's similar. We used to drink a lot of Negromaro actually when we were in Singapore. Yeah. Actually, I enjoy it. What are you thinking about this wine? I quite enjoy it. I have to be in the mood for it but I really enjoy it. It's so funny because Sherina is very critical about Southern Italian wine. She's very critical. She usually does not enjoy them that much. This to me, I have to say I'm pretty impressed. I feel like if the finish were just a little bit long, we could move into like ridiculous levels. But I'm like in a 91 point range. I think it's very, 91, I think it's very good wine. Wow. It's, I think that the same idea and then I think in this wine. So also, for example, the mint. No, I'm happy because the owner of this wine is my friend. Then when we watch this video, it's very, very, very good. I'm going to tell you right now for fans that want to, it's not just a fruity wine. When you think of Southern Italian wine, it's got meat. It's got some complexity, right? Yeah. I find that this is a wine that is very intentional. Like the wine maker really knows what's he's doing. And I love the tenon in this wine. Because you know, Negro or Maro can be quite tannic, right? All around the mouth. But these tenons, they are sweet. And at the same time, it's quite fresh as well. Like astringent, fresh. So I talk about a secret of this wine. The wine maker is a sommelier. So it's not an, not only knowledge, but sommelier. So it's like. I like sommelier wine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you guys should check these wines out. You could, I will put Stefano's like in there. You can get them on Salento Wine Shop. We don't get anything out of it if you purchase it. But he ships to America. I think he ships to all over Europe. You can check these out. I think this is more of a reserve wine. These are kind of more mid-range type wines. You can also check out Stefano's Salento Wine Tour. I'll put the link in the description box. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So guys, if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Exotic wine channel. And I will see you at the next episode. Remember, drink adventurously, expand your palate, expand your mind.