Tenute Rubino > Articles > The territory > Negroamaro, grape variety

Negroamaro, also Negro amaro, is a red wine grape variety native to southern Italy. It is grown almost exclusively in Apulia and particularly in Salento, the peninsula which can be visualised as the 'heel' of Italy. The grape can indeed produce wines very deep in color. Wines made from Negroamaro tend to be very rustic in character, combining perfume with an earthy bitterness. The grape produces some of the best red wines of Apulia, particularly when blended with the highly scented Malvasia Nera, as in the case of Salice Salentino.

Although amaro is the Italian for ‘bitter’, the name Negroamaro is thought to derive from two words meaning ‘black’: the Latin language ‘negro’ and the ancient Greek ‘maru’. ’Maru’ shares a root with "merum", a wine brought to Apulia by Illyrian colonists before the Greeks arrived in the 7th century BC. Horace and other Roman writers mention "mera tarantina" from Taranto, and Pliny the Elder describes Manduria as ’viticulosa’ (full of vineyards).

But after the fall of the Roman Empire winemaking declined until it was only kept alive in the monasteries - Benedictine on Murgia and Greek Orthodox in Salento. Negroamaro could be the grape used in merum, or it could have been brought by traders from the home of winemaking in Asia Minor at any point in the last 8000 years.

Negroamaro precoce has recently been identified as a distinct clone. RAPD analysis suggests that it is loosely related to Verdicchio (Verdeca) and Sangiovese.

from: wikipedia.org