For three generations, we have been producing Primitivo di Manduria, following unchanged traditions over time. We cultivate the land with passion, focusing solely on the quality of the grapes. We refine and bottle our wines with the ambition of transferring the most authentic and characteristic flavors and aromas of our land into each glass.
The passion between our family and wine emerged in the early decades of the last century. It was our grandparents who first understood the potential that a land like ours could express, founding one of the first companies for bulk wine trade. Towards the end of the 1960s, our father, Giovanni Soloperto, took the next step and, even before the DOC regulations, bottled the Primitivo in its pure form in the first small cellar.
The cellar
Over time, the cellar has expanded to its current size, and today in our company, we produce around 500,000 bottles per year. Primitivo is always our main resource, accompanied by wines of the Apulian tradition such as Negroamaro and Sussumaniello, some white grape varieties from the Murgia hills, which make up the Locorotondo DOC.
Our work is focused on promoting the native grape varieties of Apulia, a rich ampelographic heritage with variety and history. At the same time, we are very attentive to the needs of consumers, offering them both simple and ready-to-drink wines, as well as more complex and structured wines suitable for aging. Every bottle from Cantine Soloperto is always a product of high quality, carrying the essence of a unique terroir in the world: Apulia.
The Terroir
Among the elements that give value to a terroir, the most important is undoubtedly the human being who, after centuries of work, has reshaped the rural landscape to his service. Unique in this regard is the presence of Primitivo small trees, a cultivation method that is very rare to find elsewhere and conducted without the use of tutors. It is a difficult and costly method, but the farmer of these lands is an enemy of compromise and shortcuts.
Stones, the Sun, and Men
Manduria is located in the north of Salento, a stone's throw from the Murgia Tarantino plateau and a few kilometers from the beaches of the Ionian Sea, marked by the Saracen lookout towers. The lands on which the Primitivo vines rest are of clay-limestone nature, with the presence of fossils and iron oxides, which give the soil a natural reddish color. The iron present in the soil aids drainage, preventing stagnation after rains, and for this reason, the red lands are among the most suitable for wine production.
Here the winter is mild and the temperature rarely drops below zero. The summer, on the contrary, is often blinding and the thermometer easily exceeds 40°, especially on days when the African sirocco winds blow. Rainfall is low and snow is even rarer and when it does, it does not exceed a few centimeters.
Wine Tourism
The entire Soloperto staff is ready to welcome you at the point of sale where we will have the pleasure of hosting you by inviting you to taste and visit the historic Primitivo winery.
The Museum
The first underground wine vats born in the winery, built of concrete to accompany the fermentation of our wines in the early seventies, have been opened, renovated and connected to host a small museum that tells the story of the company and the territory where it began and lives, to visitors who want to know our reality.
In the small rooms, which once were tanks, are displayed the ancient tools and utensils that our ancestors used in their daily lives. A small route illustrates the different moments in the history of the peasant and craftsman's world of the territory: the house tools such as the ratìcula, the frascèra, the tristièddi, the tools of the trade such as the shoemaker's shape or the carpenter's tools, the tools for agriculture like the plows, the runcatùri and the runcèdda, the zappulitèdda, the tools of the past oenologist like the màlicand, the cellar equipment such as the bàscula, the manual bottler and capper.
Some tanks, on the other hand, host the history of our production: from the Primitivo bottles of 1970, to the first ones after the approval of the specification in 1975, testimony of our presence in the history of the DOP from its birth, up to the reserves for vertical tastings, through the stages of our corporate life and our love for the Primitivo di Manduria.
Primitivo di Manduria
A red grape variety, it owes its name to its early ripening. The harvest of Primitivo di Manduria, in fact, begins towards the end of August and ends in the first days of September. The bunch is loose and the berries are very sweet with a thin skin.
Its origins are uncertain, and the documents in the possession of historians tell us that the first to select the vine cuttings was a canon of Gioia del Colle, Filippo Indelicati. From Gioia it arrived in Manduria thanks to a marital dowry and since then it has become the symbolic grape variety of the city. Recently, some scientists have discovered, thanks to DNA tests, a very close relationship with the Californian Zinfandel and a common origin with the Croatian Plavac Mali.
The Primitivo grape has a high sugar content that allows for the production of wines with a good alcohol content, well tempered by a fruit always in good evidence. Some vineyards, under particular climatic and environmental conditions, can produce splendid wines that even reach 17-18 degrees of alcohol. The wines have excellent aging potential, even in the natural sweet version.