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Appellation · Italy

Salice Salentino

Negroamaro from the Salento peninsula — soft, warm and bitter-edged, and one of southern Italy’s most dependable cheap reds.

Salice Salentino DOCmediterraneanhot
What to expect in the glass

Full-bodied dry red with baked plum, dried fig and a bitter-almond finish. Soft tannin, low acidity, warm alcohol. Cheap and generous.

About Salice Salentino

The Salento is the heel of Italy — flat, hot and surrounded on three sides by sea. Negroamaro is its principal red variety, and the name means "black bitter".

The wine is deep, soft and warm, with baked dark fruit and a characteristic bitter finish that keeps it from being flabby despite the heat.

Puglia was for most of the twentieth century a bulk supplier, its wine shipped north to add colour and alcohol to thinner blends. That trade has largely ended and the region now bottles its own.

What the name means

Legal name
Salice Salentino DOC
Type
Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC)
Set by
MASAF
Recognised
1976
Regulates
Origin, plus grape varieties, maximum yields, minimum ageing.

The delimited area, permitted varieties and their proportions, maximum yields, minimum alcohol and — for riserva and similar terms — minimum ageing.

Worth knowing

Principally Negroamaro, with Malvasia Nera permitted.

Grapes

Wines from here

red

Full-bodied dry red

Dense, powerful reds with substantial tannin, dark fruit and often noticeable oak — the wines for steak and for cellaring.

Rules worth knowing

Confirmed in the EU register

Salice Salentino is registered as a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), file number PDO-IT-A0567, protected at EU level since 1982.

Article 107 of Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013

Only the rules that change what to expect in the glass or on the label. WineHQ does not reproduce production specifications, and each entry carries the date it was last checked because appellation rules change.

The designation is confirmed above. WineHQ has not read this appellation’s production specification, so it publishes no yields, ageing minima or permitted-variety lists for it — those come from the document linked above, not from a summary of it.

What to eat, and how to serve it

Derived from this region’s signature styles. Each is listed separately, because a region does not have one serving temperature.

Full-bodied dry red

Serve at 16–18°C (cool room temperature).

Try with roast chicken, fillet steak or grilled chicken.

Where to go next

Places worth trying if you like this one — neighbours, rivals, and the obvious step across.

  • Primitivo di Manduria — The Puglian home of Primitivo — the same variety as Zinfandel, established by DNA analysis, and a very different wine.
  • Puglia — The heel of Italy, and the source of ripe, soft, generous Primitivo and Negroamaro.

Sources

Sources consulted