2008 Tormaresca NePriCa

The facts:
2008 Tormaresca NePriCa
Region: Puglia, Italy
Variety: 40% Negroamaro, 30% Primitivo, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon
Aging: Stainless steel tanks and in bottle.

Price point:
I picked it up for just under $10. An internet search found this wine for anywhere from $7.45 to $11.99.

My take:

A while back, I picked a bunch of random wines that I’d never had with the intention of reviewing them. This was one of those wines. Admittedly, we’ve probably had it 3 or 4 times before actually writing this review, so obviously it’s one we like.

This one quite literally has a nose of cherry vanilla with a hint of tobacco. Yes, I know, we said from the get-go that we weren’t going to talk about wines that way, but I can’t help it. That’s exactly what this wine brought to mind for me. Perhaps the wine made me want to wax poetic, to steal a term from Jonathan. In my color terms, I’d say it smells purple to dark red.

It tastes purple/dark red to slightly brown, but not too earthy. And it’s somewhat dry, but not overly so. It also has a relatively long finish, which is a bit surprising at this price point. I find the wine to be very well balanced.

This wine is definitely not one note; perhaps two or three? It has a couple of layers. The dark red cherry gets you up front and then it mellows to the purple followed by just a hint of spice. In an ideal world, I wish it were a bit more complex to match the length of the finish. But again, at this price point, I’m not arguing the point of complexity. In my oh so humble opinion, this is a very nice wine for under $10. It’s more like getting a $15 bottle for less than $10.

2008 Tormaresca Neprica

It’s high time we reviewed this wine. Kerri picked this one up on a lark and the first time we had it, I felt more like drinking and less like reviewing, so it was consumed sans documentation. Since we found it interesting and wanted to review it Kerri bought us another bottle.

I drank that one when she wasn’t looking. (This may have happened twice, I lose track sometimes.. but hey…who’s counting) So another bottle(s) was procured to provide the source material for this missive.

While the name is a bit kitschy for my liking, with Neprica being an amalgamation of the grapes in the wine (Negroamaro, Primitivo, Cabernet) it immediately meets one of my criteria for wines I want to drink; exotica grapes. While I suppose grapes are not exactly exotic in nature, there are varietals that you don’t tend to see every day. I find these days that I love to explore wines that are not primarily Cabs, Merlots, Pinot Noirs etc.. Given that, here we have a solid candidate with old world grapes chock full of Italian blended mystery.

Ever since running into one at Proof in D.C. I have been a sucker for a Negroamaro. There is something mysterious in the name itself, that, for me, seems to be passed down into the wine. You don’t see them every day, but in poking around in stores with a decent Italian wine selection you are sure to find them. The Negroamaro is native to southern Italy, and as such, is one more reason I need to go there.

In describing the wine, I am going to skip the usual aromatic metaphors, as I believe there are professionals out there paid to do just such a thing, and go with a visual instead. This wine, is like red satin sheets on a waterbed in a candle lit room. Think about that for a bit. I’d go into more detail, but honestly, at that point, I’d just be adding unnecessary words to a beautifully crafted image, one that is wholly sufficient to describe my impressions of this wine.

I’m a huge fan of this wine, and at under $10 there is no reason you shouldn’t have a bottle or four in your wine fridge, rack, cabinet, cupboard, sock drawer, or where ever else it is that you store your wines.