Polvanera

Puglia

Gioia de Colle, Bari

Filippo Cassano started making wine before he’d even entered his teens, and was a fully qualified winemaker by the age of 18. In 2003, with what would account for almost a normal working lifetime of experience, Filippo acquired an old farm in Marchesana, near Gioia del Colle, with the primary aim of showcasing Primitivo at its best.

The farm already had some pockets of ancient Primitivo vines, but he supplemented these with new plantings, purchases and leases, including significant plots of 40–60-year-old bush vines – some of which his grandfather had planted. Additionally, he carved out an 8-metre-deep cellar in the limestone near the old farmhouse, providing a cool and stable environment for the wines to mature.

The Gioia del Colle DOC sits just south of Puglia’s capital, Bari, in pretty much the exact geographic centre of the region, on the Altopiano delle Murge (the Murge plateau). Somewhat contrary to a view that Puglia is just one baking-hot plain, the Murge plateau reaches an elevation of 450m where some of Filippo’s oldest producing vines are located. These exposed Primitivo bush vines are cooled and protected from diseases by the wind and are typically some of the last in the area to fully ripen, perhaps accounting for the rare balance found in the Polvanera wines.

Viticulture is strictly organic (certified in 2008), and the winemaking is gentle and non-interventionist. Filippo experimented with barriques in the very early years of the estate, but found that they masked the attributes of his beloved Primitivo, and today the wines see "only steel and glass".