​Massaging Primitivo with music therapy

Last March I found myself in London at the same time as Pasquale Petrera of the Puglian estate Fatalone. He was there to present a flight of Primitivo going all the way back to their first official bottling of 1988, with two even older vintages, bottled for family use only, 1981 and 1977. From the start of the presentation, organised by Doug Wregg of UK importer Les Caves de Pyrène, it was clear that Petrera was on a mission: to show that Primitivo (the variety known as Zinfandel in California) can age. In his case more than 30 years. ‘We...