Cantina Sociale Copertino

The story

The Feast Wine

Negroamaro is one of the south's dark grapes: thick-skinned, deeply coloured, built for long maceration and red wine. At some point in Cupertinum's history, the cooperative took a batch of it and removed the skins before fermentation began. Without skin contact, no colour transferred, and the resulting must was pale and citrus-edged rather than deep and fruit-laden. That base wine then underwent secondary fermentation in sealed stainless-steel tanks, building bubbles through the Martinotti method. The finished wine was pale straw yellow with golden reflections and fine, persistent perlage. The cooperative named it Giorti, from the Greek word for feast or festivity, a word that connects to the Salento's long history as part of Magna Graecia, the Greek-settled south of Italy. A dark red grape from flat clay fields, turned pale, turned sparkling, named in an ancient language: the contrast is stranger and more deliberate than it looks from the label.

From the atlas

Cantina Sociale Copertino (Cupertinum)

At A Glance

The Producer

In 1935, thirty-six vine-growers in the town of Copertino pooled their land and their labour into a single cooperative. Individually, they had no practical route to sell bottled wine. Collectively, they built one. Cupertinum has operated as a cooperative for ninety years.

Copertinum sits in the Salento peninsula, the narrow heel of southern Italy between the Ionian and Adriatic coasts, south of Lecce. The appellation it anchors, Copertino DOC, received formal recognition in 1976, relatively late for a region with deep local wine-growing roots. The cooperative farms around 300 hectares of flat, clay-over-limestone vineyard and built its range on a single grape: Negroamaro.

The two bottles Cupertinum is known for run Negroamaro in opposite directions. The Copertino Riserva DOC is a dark, warm southern red aged in stainless steel without oak. Giorti Spumante takes the same thick-skinned, deeply coloured grape and vinifies it white, producing a pale sparkling wine with citrus character and the grape's natural body. Giorti means feast in Greek, and the name signals something about where Salento sits historically: this land was part of Magna Graecia, the Greek-settled south of Italy, and the cooperative chose to name a wine from it in the old language.

Place

Copertino DOC covers a flat strip of the Salento interior, lying south of the city of Lecce and distinct from the Salice Salentino DOC to the north and west. The terrain sits at 30 to 60 metres above sea level with little topographic variation. The heat is reliable and prolonged through the growing season; the sea on both flanks keeps air moving and moderates the warmest summer periods.

The soils are clay over hard limestone or tufaceous rock. Clay retains moisture through summer drought, which supports Negroamaro's steady, full ripening without excessive stress. The limestone base contributes to the grape's firm tannin and keeps the wine's acidity from going flat in the heat. Wines labelled Copertino DOC must be predominantly Negroamaro. The Riserva designation requires additional ageing beyond the base DOC standard.

Soil And Site

The 300 hectares Cupertinum farms are spread across the flat Copertino plain at low elevation. The clay-over-limestone profile is consistent across the zone: heavy clay topsoil that holds warmth and slows drainage, over a hard calcareous or tufaceous substrate that keeps vine roots working downward. The combination suits Negroamaro, a variety that puts on thick skins and accumulates colour and tannin across a long season. No hills sharpen the temperature swings; the grape ripens evenly and fully, which is why the cellar does not need oak to soften what the vineyard gives.

Story

For the first four decades of Cupertinum's life, Copertino had no formal appellation of its own. The cooperative grew Negroamaro and sold much of what it produced in bulk, as most of southern Italy did, contributing to the anonymous blending market that kept the north Italian and French industries running. The 1976 DOC designation changed the cooperative's position. Copertino wines could now carry a named origin rather than disappearing into other people's labels.

The cooperative's response was conservative in the best sense. Where other producers in Puglia began moving toward French oak and international-facing extraction in the 1990s and 2000s, Cupertinum stayed in stainless steel. The choice keeps fruit forward and tannin clean, and it suits Negroamaro's natural character in this warm, flat terrain. Whether that was a deliberate terroir philosophy or an economic calculation is not fully documented, but the outcome is consistent: the wines read as southern without being heavy, and they age without oak character muddying the fruit.

Giorti Spumante complicated the picture. At some point the cooperative chose to take Negroamaro through white vinification and the Martinotti method, producing a sparkling wine that looks and smells nothing like the grape's red incarnation. The decision carried cultural weight alongside the technical one: naming the wine Giorti, from Greek, placed it in the longer history of the land rather than in the contemporary market for easy Puglia reds.

Vineyards And Cellar

The vineyards are trained across flat ground with little slope variation. Clay soils hold water through summer, and Negroamaro's thick skins handle sustained heat without losing acidity entirely. The grape's natural tannin load is generous, which means maceration time and temperature matter more than oak ageing as a flavour lever.

For the Copertino DOC wines, maceration on the skins runs seven to eight days at 28 degrees Celsius. The controlled temperature prevents volatile loss and keeps fruit character intact through extraction. After soft pressing, the wine goes into stainless steel for ageing. No barrels. The wine is aged in stainless steel.

Giorti is made differently. The skins are removed before fermentation can extract colour, leaving a pale, citrus-based must. Secondary fermentation happens in sealed stainless-steel tanks using the Martinotti method, building the mousse under pressure. The wine emerges pale straw yellow with golden light through it and fine, persistent bubbles.

Wines

The range sits on two expressions of Negroamaro.

The Copertino DOC and Copertino Riserva DOC are the core reds. Both use the same maceration and stainless-steel method; the Riserva carries additional ageing and correspondingly more concentration. The colour is ruby red with garnet at the edge. On the nose: blackberry, plum, Mediterranean scrub, ripe fruit, leather. Those aromatics run deep and warm. The palate is full and generous, with almond and blackcurrant tones that settle into the mid-palate and carry through a long finish. The tannin is firm but not hard. No oak means no vanilla or toast to interrupt the grape's own character.

Giorti Spumante is a departure in every visible dimension. The colour is pale straw yellow with golden reflections. The nose is citrus-led, with harmonious and refined notes that read nothing like the Riserva. The palate is substantial and persistent for a sparkling wine: Negroamaro still carries its weight even after white vinification. The fine perlage is consistent and long. It is a wine that earns surprise on first encounter and makes sense on the second.

In The Glass

The Copertino Riserva opens with ripe dark fruit: blackberry and plum, followed by dried Mediterranean herbs and a leather note underneath. The nose is dense without being sweet-smelling. In the mouth, the wine is warm and full, the kind of weight that Salento's flat clay vineyards and long growing season produce reliably. Almond and blackcurrant deepen through the mid-palate. The tannin is clean rather than aggressive: seven to eight days of skin contact at a controlled temperature extracts colour and flavour without over-building grip. The finish is long and slightly dry. No oak intrudes.

Giorti arrives from a different direction entirely. The nose is light and citrus-forward, refined where the Riserva is dense. On the palate, the body is more substantial than the colour suggests: Negroamaro does not disappear just because its skins were removed. The bubbles are fine and persistent. The overall character is harmonious, with the sparkling format lifting and extending what would otherwise be a relatively full base wine.

A Bottle To Understand It

Start with the Copertino Riserva DOC. It is Negroamaro at its most legible in this context: a warm, full, dark southern red with no oak to mask the grape and no extraction excess to harden the tannin. The blackberry and plum on the nose come directly from the grape ripening on clay at Salento's latitude. The almond and blackcurrant on the palate arrive from the same source. The stainless-steel ageing keeps it clean. It is a straightforward wine in the best sense, honest about where it comes from and what Negroamaro does in flat, warm terrain. A grilled lamb chop or aged pecorino next to it is not a coincidence.

Once the Riserva has set the reference point, Giorti Spumante makes more sense as a contrast: the same grape, opposite direction.

Anecdote

Negroamaro is one of the south's dark grapes: thick-skinned, deeply coloured, built for long maceration and red wine. At some point in Cupertinum's history, the cooperative took a batch of it and removed the skins before fermentation began. Without contact, no colour transferred, and the resulting must was pale and citrus-edged rather than deep and fruit-laden. That base wine then underwent secondary fermentation in sealed stainless-steel tanks, building bubbles through the Martinotti method. The finished wine was pale straw yellow with golden reflections and fine, persistent perlage. The cooperative named it Giorti, from the Greek word for feast or festivity, a word that connects to the Salento's long history as part of Magna Graecia, the Greek-settled south. A dark red grape from flat clay fields, turned pale, turned sparkling, named in an ancient language: the contrast is stranger and more deliberate than it looks from the label.

Final Word

Cupertinum is a cooperative that has worked one grape across ninety years without losing the thread. The Copertino Riserva tells a direct story about Negroamaro in warm, flat Salento terrain. Giorti tells a stranger one. Both are worth knowing.

Sources

• https://www.cupertinum.it/en/home-en/
• https://www.cupertinum.it/en/copertino-doc-en/
• https://www.banvillewine.com/dc/en/wines/89/copertino-riserva-doc
• https://www.cupertinum.it/en/giorti-en/
• http://www.cupertinum.it/en/copertino-riserva-doc-en/