2021 Trullo Flaminio Negroamaro

Trullo Flaminio exists because four friends from the wine trade could not let two hectares of fifty-year-old alberello Negroamaro disappear when the grower who had tended them for decades sold up in 2016; the vines stand on red clay over the Salento limestone a few kilometres from the Adriatic, on the line of the ancient Via Appia outside Brindisi. The wine is made without tricks: picked at the end of September with two extra weeks on the vine, fermented in concrete with native yeasts and raised eight months in used tonneaux, so what you taste is old vines and a hot peninsula rather than a cellar. 2021 was Puglia's drought year, a small, healthy crop picked from mid-September that gave dark, concentrated wines, and five years in bottle have softened its edges. In the glass, it pours a deep, dark ruby with a garnet rim. The nose is black plum, dried cherry, rosemary and tobacco leaf, with a smoky, sun-warmed note of crushed terracotta. On the palate it is full-bodied but not heavy, with round, grainy tannins and enough acidity to keep the fruit lifted; the finish is savory and long, closing on the bitter-almond note that is the variety's fingerprint. This is honest, old-school Negroamaro, fiercely unmanipulated and at its peak. Drink now and through 2028, with orecchiette and ragù di braciole, grilled lamb, or aged caciocavallo.