Zensa Primitivo Puglia IGP (Organic)

Description

Zensa Primitivo Puglia IGP (Indicazione Geografica Protetta) is an organic red wine made in the Puglia wine-growing region.

It is made by Orion Wines, a company created in 2010 to bring together interesting wines from small growers and wineries from all over Italy. The company was created by 25 year wine trade veteran Luca Pomaro, head winemaker Alessandro Michelon and Elena Cuirletti who had worked in the English and German markets. Orion Wines retains complete control over the vineyards and growers they work with. The idea is to produce wines from indigenous grapes that express the typicity of the particular region where they are grown.

The grapes for Zensa Primitivo are sourced from low-yielding, fully organic vineyards in the Salento area of Southern Puglia. These vines are trained in the Guyot system and they have an average age of 20 to 35 years old. The grapes are harvested by hand. After de-stemming, the grapes are not crushed, allowing them to remain intact, reducing damage to the skins and optimising colour extraction. The wine undergoes a temperature-controlled fermentation at 24/25 °C for 8-10 days. Frequent remontage and delestage are carried out in the early stages of fermentation in order to achieve soft extraction of aromas and gentle tannins. After racking, malolactic bacteria are added to induce the second fermentation. Finally, 30% of the wine is aged for 8 months in American and French oak barriques.

Zensa means “without” or “to do without” in Italian and the organic Zensa Primitivo is made without pesticides, fertilisers or weed-killers.  The weeds and grass between the vine rows are allowed to grow and then mowed periodically so that the cut weeds rot back into the soil, which provides organic fertilizer.