How San Marzano Is Rewriting Puglia, One Grape Past Primitivo

19 aug How San Marzano Is Rewriting Puglia, One Grape Past Primitivo

Words by Albert van Beeck Calkoen
Images by DiegoMariella.com

Ask most people what they know about San Marzano, and you’ll get one of two answers. Either they’ll say Primitivo, the grape that carried the winery onto international wine lists and made Puglia’s name outside Italy. Or they’ll say tomatoes, and mean an entirely different San Marzano altogether. Angelo Cotugno, export manager at Cantine San Marzano, has heard both often enough that neither surprises him anymore. But when asked what consumers, and even trade buyers, still get wrong about the region, he doesn’t start with geography. He starts with how the wine industry talks. “As an industry, we tend to over-complicate everything, from hyper-technical terroir breakdowns to rigid pairing rules, effectively scaring people off before they even take a sip,” he says. “People don’t buy a bottle of wine, or Primitivo in particular, because they want a lecture on soil chemistry or clonal selection. They buy it because they want something rich, delicious, and satisfying to share over a meal. The technical details should be a quiet foundation for those who ask, not a bar for entry.”

It’s a pointed thing for an export manager to lead with, considering his job is arguably to get people excited about exactly that kind of detail. But it sets up the real premise of this conversation: San Marzano’s push beyond Primitivo, into Susumaniello, Verdeca, and Fiano, isn’t a technical story about rare grapes for wine geeks. It’s an attempt to correct a much simpler misconception. “The biggest thing consumers, and even some trade buyers, still get wrong about Puglia in general is that it’s only a cheap red wine region,” Cotugno says. “There is so much more here than that.”

From cash crop to brand

Primitivo didn’t just build San Marzano’s name, it built the runway for everything else the winery wants to do now. Cotugno is direct about the calculation behind that. “Primitivo opened the door to the global market, but diversity builds long-term brand equity,” he says. “Using Primitivo as the financial engine while aggressively promoting varieties like Susumaniello, Negroamaro, Verdeca, and many more allows a winery to defend its baseline while attacking high-margin, trendy, and year-round market segments.” That’s less a romantic rediscovery of forgotten grapes than a deliberate portfolio strategy, one grape carrying the weight so others can take risks. It also explains why San Marzano’s structure for making these calls has changed since its founding. The winery began in 1962 as a cooperative of 19 growers, a structure that might suggest today’s grape investments are still decided collectively, vineyard by vineyard. Cotugno says that’s no longer how it works. “Over time, the governance has evolved. Today, investment decisions follow a clear strategic and technical direction defined by the market, through leadership who, with at least five years’ anticipation, decide which varieties deserve research, innovation, and international positioning.” Susumaniello, Verdeca, and Fiano aren’t experiments the winery stumbled into. They were chosen years in advance.

A region built for more than one style

Understanding why Puglia can support this range at all starts with its shape. It’s a peninsula that runs roughly 400 kilometres north to south, and Cotugno splits it into two distinct wine regions rather than one. “The north is more fertile land with easier access to water. The south, Salento, is drier land, framed by two seas, where soils shift dramatically within minutes: marine sands, red clays, limestone, windswept plateaus.” That range, he says, is what lets the region produce both concentrated reds and crisp, mineral whites from the same broader territory. It’s a place, in his words, “capable of delivering power, elegance, and freshness.”

Susumaniello: sell the story, not the name

Of the three grapes at the centre of this shift, Susumaniello carries the most dramatic backstory. It nearly disappeared before growers and wineries began replanting it. In the glass, Cotugno describes “a deep, vibrant red with crunchy red and black fruits, firm but polished tannins, and a subtle balsamic lift that makes it feel surprisingly contemporary.” His target drinker isn’t a specialist. “It’s for drinkers who enjoy intensity without heaviness.” The harder problem is commercial: how do you get a buyer with ten competing bottles on the table to bet shelf space on a grape they can’t pronounce. Cotugno’s answer skips the name entirely. “You don’t sell the name, you sell the fascinating and unique ampelographic richness of Italy and of Puglia, leveraging the scarcity of the grape, the story behind it, and, of course, the tasting.” Rarity becomes the pitch, not an obstacle to it.

Verdeca: priced out of its old job

Verdeca’s route to the bottle is more unusual still, because for decades it wasn’t really destined for one. It was a workhorse grape, mostly used in bulk wine and vermouth production. Cotugno’s explanation for the shift is refreshingly unsentimental: “Verdeca has become too expensive for vermouth production.” Once that pressure lifted, winemakers had the room to actually look at what the grape could do on its own. “Verdeca was assessed for its own potential by forward-thinking winemakers who tested its versatility to be interpreted in many ways,” he says, pointing to modern techniques, gentle pressing, controlled fermentation, careful reduction management, that highlight its natural acidity. There’s a market pull too: rising global demand for fresh, mineral, non-aromatic whites, a category Cotugno says Verdeca “performs surprisingly well” in. What comes out the other end, he says, is “a white wine with citrus, herbal notes, and a clean mineral backbone” that finally has “a clear identity” of its own. The people responding to it aren’t who you’d necessarily expect for an obscure Puglian white. “The most receptive consumers are Anglo-Saxons who enjoy Viognier, or white wines with medium body, nice acidity, and a pleasant fruity bouquet,” Cotugno says, a reference point that does more to place Verdeca on an international wine list than any amount of terroir talk could.

Fiano: same name, different sun

Fiano has an advantage Susumaniello and Verdeca don’t: people already know it, largely through Campania. Cotugno treats that recognition as an asset rather than a comparison to fight. “Fiano’s recognition helps. Buyers already know the aromatic and structural profile. But Salento’s Fiano is a different clone: more Mediterranean, more sun-driven, with riper white fruit and a different kind of salinity.” The positioning, he says, rests on difference, not similarity. Within San Marzano’s own range, Talò Fiano has a specific job to do. “It’s designed as a ‘bridge white’,” Cotugno explains. “It’s aromatic enough for consumers who enjoy expressive wines, it works as both an aperitif and a food wine, and it’s an ideal introduction to non-aromatic Puglian whites, and to other San Marzano whites in general.” It’s less a flagship bottle than an entry point, built to lead drinkers toward the rest of the portfolio.

What closes the sale

Ask Cotugno what actually convinces a sommelier or retail buyer to say yes to something like Susumaniello or Verdeca, and he doesn’t point to one factor. He lays out a sequence instead. “Story gets them to take the meeting, price makes the math work, but unexpected balance and freshness in the glass gets the signature,” he says. It’s a sales mechanic, but he treats it as something closer to a mission statement. “This is what San Marzano is in a few words, and the philosophy behind the company. It’s not just a grape variety, it’s what’s behind a brand that gives the push.”

What San Marzano wants to be, beyond the grape

Zoom out from any single variety, and Cotugno describes a winery that has already moved past needing Primitivo as its sole identity. Asked where he wants San Marzano to stand in five years, whether it’s still “the Primitivo house that also makes other things,” or something else, he doesn’t hedge. “San Marzano is already becoming something else, and it’s already not only associated with Primitivo. It is now an established lifestyle brand that stands on its own, going beyond regional stereotypes and embodying Mediterranean culture, contemporary freshness, and modernity.” That framing loops back to where he started, the frustration with an industry that leads with technical complexity instead of what people actually want from a bottle. It’s also there in the one myth about Puglian wine he’d erase permanently if he could. “Definitely the one that claims Puglia produces only sweet wines,” he says. “It’s now time to go past these rigid mental categories. The focus is on the right balance between acidity and softness, the cleanliness of the tasting notes, the pleasantness of the sip.” For a region that spent decades known for one grape, and occasionally mistaken for a can of tomatoes, that’s the real pitch behind Susumaniello, Verdeca, and Fiano: not three new names to memorise, but proof that Puglia was never just one style to begin with.