Es | Primitivo di Manduria | Gianfranco Fino 2008

PV Tasting Notes

This wine is black/purple in colour, the aromatics soar, when I first smelled the wine my head filled with purple, it was an extraordinary feeling, decadent blackberry jam, raisins, chocolate, liquorice, mineral and a room full of violets. The palate is satin, the fruit simply explodes in the olfactory, at first it’s concentrated cherry parma-violets sweets, then the wine begins to unfold, revealing multiple dimensions in its glorious inner mouth perfume, smoke, prunes, raspberries, coffee, cedar and nap leather, so rich and sweet fruit beautifully balanced by the acidity, it is a dry wine but tastes almost like a Recioto, totally viscous with full throttle flavours, this has enormous force and unbelievable symmetry, this could be aged for decades. The texture is utterly flamboyant, sensual and self possessed with superbly round tannins, simply put this is pure hedonism. I thought about what to serve this with and came up empty, this is a wine to drink on its own with only the great friends, it’s too powerful for food, it’s simply too big, and you cannot serve another wine after this, not even a sweet wine, this is already so sweet, it could be your dessert in a glass, and it is a dry wine with a staggering 40g/l dry extract and 6g/l total acidity. Later in the day I took some of my top winemakers to the stand to taste and they were all quite simply gobsmacked. I spent five long days tasting wines at the Italian fair and this was for me the wine discovery of the show. Tasted April 2010.

Gianfranco Fino; Champion Winegrower of Italy 2010 

Top wine of Italy Gambero Rosso 2011 Tre Biccieri Plus, 

Four Stars Decanter Magazine Feb 2011.

Without doubt....my most incredible find of 2010!
These astonishing and totally extreme wines from an estate I have never heard of before, they also come from a winemaker I have never heard of before, but both deserve very special attention and the buzz is beginning to spread. Primitivo di Manduria is one DOC which sells most of its wines in bulk to northern Italy for blending and as a consequence has not yet made it onto the world stage, but that is all about to change.

Gianfranco Fino has just been awarded with the title 2010 Champion Winegrower of Italy! Not a bad start...so these wines are now in the spotlight but never have I tasted such extreme wines, these are unbelievable, when presented with the first sample to taste, I sat there for fully five minutes just smelling the wine, I really did not want to taste, I would have been happy to sit there all day revelling in the aromatics, but I had other meetings to attend and this needed to be done... see the full tasting note below. In the interim, some background notes on the project.

The estate was purchased in 2004 and is some 7 hectares of Primitivo vines with an average age of 50 years grown in the bush vine method making a mere 9,000 bottles of the wine called Es, plus 1 hectare of Negramaro making a wine called Jo. Primitivo was introduced to the region by the Messapians some 2 centuries BC and gets its name because of its tendency to ripen early, Manduria is located on the inside heel of the boot. Before tasting the wines I knew nothing, I asked if the name had anything to do with Freud, and they told me it did, then I sat just smelling the wine and contemplating what on earth was in this glass. Yes! I know it was Primitivo, but, this had nothing in common with the normal poorer Italian Primitivo which often smell like unripe tobacco and mostly green notes, many of which are atrocious. This wine was much more like the Californian brother Zinfandel and the perfume was even bigger than the best of Turley, Martinelli or Ridge....I just thought; my god what is this!

Es, according to Sigmund Freud: is instinct and wild passion – the same is used to produce this wine – with no pre conditions, no rules, beyond space and time, logic or morals. Es doesn’t know good or bad, Es submits only to one principle “PLEASURE” The wines are made without chemicals in the vineyard , no irrigation and no fertilizers, bottled without fining or filtration and the results are the most concentrated, complex and exiting wines I have ever come across, these are Italian wines with a strong southern accent and we have placed our order paid for them in advance but our cash flow does not allow us to take the kind of quantities I would like, so here we offer the first 20 dozen of each which will arrive in early June, if we can sell these quickly then we will bring more across. One thing I am certain of people will either love them or hate them, but make no mistake they will sell out from the winery very, very quickly now that people are becoming aware of this estate so we have to move quickly.

May I suggest, all wine aficionado’s and wine fanatics alike should do everything possible to latch onto these wines, the future of the estate is for me without question, these are the new benchmark for either Primitivo or it’s better known cousin the American varietal Zinfandel. One more point, I will be happy to refund all customers buying these wines if they are not truly ecstatic with the wines on delivery, I must get as many as possible, it is that simple.

Regarding ratings, there are none out for this wine YET...my rating was....don’t know? never had anything like it before, but for the Es, somewhere between 95 and 99 points! It’s still a baby, and knowing how stringent the ratings are becoming now, plus this being the first vintage to be rated, I would think it should come in around 95 or 96 points...for a first ever...Yes it must! What a future!