Appassimento: the pumpkin spiced latte of the wine world.

If you have shopped around Italian wines before you may have come across this term. I have been asked before what does it mean? Is it a grape? A place? Is it a bird, a plane...

Nope, it's none of these things. Rather, it's a style of Winemaking that has quite a big influence on the final taste. 

Have you ever left a piece of fruit out on a very hot very dry day? When you come back you will notice it will have evaporated a lot of its water content and will have started to shrivel. In Italy this can happen very easily to grapes that have either been picked and left in the sun, or left on the vine beyond their usual harvest date. In these appassimento wines, winemakers will dry the grapes like this on purpose.

This has the effect of concentrating the juice in those grapes, as well as helping them develop ripe, and even over-ripe slightly baked fruit flavours. That was the case in this wine pictured, a Primitivo from Puglia made in the appassimento …