Flaio
Salento Primitivo
2006
A wonderful wine for the price. It's youthful, with a few raw edges, but overall it's extremely balanced, well-integrated, and, as Steve says, "rich." It has good dark fruit, with chocolate, and (okay, we'll say it) leather. It has a little funkiness that tastes like age, although it's not aged.
Primitivo is the Zinfandel grape. This wine is a bit like a Zin, but less hot and fruity—or anyway less so than most California Zins. It hails from Salento, in Puglia, at the southern heel of the Italian boot. It's essentially classed as a table wine—Indicazione Geographica Tipica—but delivers a lot more character than other IGT wines we've had from Italy.
Cost: $8.59 (sale)
