Il Melograno

Organic red Castel del Monte DOP wine

Il Melograno is a certified organic red wine produced in Corato, north of Bari, in the Apulian Murge region, at 250 meters above sea level. It comes from a family farm that has been producing artisanal wine and oil since 1822. We are close to Castel del Monte, an octagonal castle of UNESCO Heritage, as shown on one of the Italian euro coins.

To us producers, Il Melograno is truly excellent in quality/price ratio. It’s a structured, intense, elegantly persistent red wine without losing its territorial identity. Long-lasting, it is worth a Riserva at a reasonable price. Distributed starting from the third year after harvest, made of pure Nero di Troia grapes.

Production is about 30,000 bottles/year. Il Melograno has the color of black cherries and smells of ripe fruit, red cherries and plums, black currant, and spices. Nero di Troia loves oxygenation in glass and requires about five minutes of oxygenation in the glass before tasting. 

This Apulian wine has a dry taste with lively tannins but is soft and elegant at the same time. Its scent is ripe fruits, spices and licorice, with good persistence. Good total acidity, personality and tannin, polyphenols and alcohol at 13.5%, make it long-lasting and with a surprising evolution in time.

Plants are grown at high-density single Guyot high espalier (sheet 30/40, parcels 87 and 271) on calcareous soil, which has been run following the rules of organic farming since 2013 without using chemicals: copper and sulphure, as in the tradition of Mediterranean vine cultivation. Through careful selection, our farm has reproduced a farm clone that can not be found in specialized nurseries.

Grapes for “Il Melograno” DOP red wine are hand-harvested and macerated with a hot-cold technique inside rotating steel tanks. Alcoholic and malolactic fermentation in steel tanks. Aging in 35 hl Slavonian oak barrels for twelve months, periodically regenerated. This process is followed by further aging into vitrified tanks and, subsequently, in bottles for at least six months. Red meat, mature cheese, legume soups, Murgia mushrooms, eastern food, and Neapolitan “taralli”(salted round biscuits) can find a perfect partner in the “Il Melograno” red wine. Drink at 16 °C after about ten minutes of oxygenation in the glass.