The dispute between Zinfandel and Primitivo - if it can be called a dispute - is not so baroque as the battle between Tancredi and Clorinda, but it sounds as old as the hills and is proving no less challenging to handle. Zinfandel is said to be California’s native grape, capable of producing its most seductive red wine. Primitivo, despite its name, is Puglia’s (i.e. Southern Italy’s) potentially finest red. but is it the product of one and the same grape variety? If so, how and when did it get from Italy’s heel to the western United States?
Though I’m not up to speed on the latest stage of the debate. it’s certainly a running story and has been capable of growing quite heated. There is no doubt that Zinfandel is the better, more enticing name, compared with which Primitivo does Italy no favours. Would you give such a wine to someone as a present?
Yet the answer is that they would be lucky to receive it, at least if it were a good example of its kind. like the one I have just been drinking from Waitrose, a Paolo Leo Primitivo of Manduria. currently reduced from £10.99 to £7.99, perhaps because nobody has been buying it. But it’s a delicious wine, especially if you decant it. which mellows its flavour and makes it taste like a great Italian red - and, to be ftank, better than some great Italian reds sometimes taste.
At its current price it is a bargain, and I shall be buying more when I return from holiday, if there is any left - failing which the Ristorante Contini in George Street serves a good specimen. Otherwise. a well-chosen Zinfandel will do very nicely, and Waitrose is again, by the look of things, able to oblige with its Apothic Red - how’s that for a name? - which at £9.99 may be worth a try. I’ll give you my thoughts on it when I return from Galloway. where neither Zinfandel nor Primitivo may prove easy to find.
17 July 2014
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