Alezio is a town in the hinterland of Gallipoli, on the Ionian side of Salento, in the province of Lecce. The DOC named after it, recognised in 1983, includes the whole of the municipalities of Alezio and Sannicola and parts of Gallipoli and Tuglie. It is a very small appellation: about 4 hectares of registered vineyard, with an output of 110 hectolitres.
The rules
Rosso and Rosato share the same base: at least 80% Negroamaro, with Malvasia Nera, Sangiovese and Montepulciano up to 20%. Minimum alcohol is 12%. The Rosso Riserva ages for at least two years and cannot be released before 1 November of the second year after the harvest.
The Rosso is deep ruby, with aromas of ripe red and black fruit, plum, spice and an earthy note, soft and warm on the palate; the Riserva adds tobacco and leather. The Rosato, cherry-pink in colour, focuses on cherry, strawberry and pomegranate, fresh and savoury.
A land of passages
The area has been inhabited since the Palaeolithic, and the dominations that followed shaped its development: the Greeks its political and cultural life, the Lombards its agriculture. After the Byzantine decline and the arrival of the Normans it became a district of the Kingdom of Sicily; the provinces established by Frederick II with the Liber Augustalis of 1231 remained in force until Italian unification in 1860, and in the second half of the thirteenth century the area passed to the Kingdom of Naples under the Angevins. Over the centuries the land was farmed for subsistence and to pay taxes, driving local trade.
At the table
The Rosato goes with the seafood cooking of Gallipoli, fish soups, oily fish and stuffed vegetables; the Rosso with grilled meat, meat ragùs, meatballs in sauce and aged cheeses such as pecorino. Among the other Negroamaro appellations of Apulia is Copertino, a little to the north.
