Fatalone 'Teres' Primitivo 2024

Azienda Agricola Petrera Pasquale (aka Fatalone) has been making wine in the Gioia del Colle region since the late 1800’s.  Like many producers in the area, bottling wine came late; most wines were sold in sfuzo, where locals would bring jugs and fill up from the tank. It was only in 1987 that the first bottles of ‘Fatalone’ were produced.  A winery with intense dedication to the earth, their certified organic farming practices as well as biodynamic principles prove to make exceptional Primitivo Gioia del Colle in three different styles, and one bianco made from the local Greco. Their belief in organic principles and renewables extends to the winery where only solar power is used to power the entire production. Fatalone is a zero emission winery.  Stainless steel is used for primary fermentation in all of the wines, and when oak is used, it is always large, old Slavonian oak.  Sulphur is not used during vinification, and only a minimum but stabilizing amount is used at bottling, leading to a remarkably purity of fruit.

Fatalone’s “Teres” Primitivo is a unique and delicious light red wine that pays homage to the Petrera family’s ancestors and their winemaking practices.  The wine comes from only the free-run must of the Racemi — the thin-skinned, second-budding fruit of the Gioia del Colle Primitivo vine. These are tiny, fist-sized bunches that produce some brilliant wine. After harvest, the whole berries spend 36 hours on the skins after which the free run juice is captured for natural fermentation. The wine spends 6 months of aging in stainless steel tank then is bottled with a light filtration and only a very small sulfur addition.

Founder Filipo Petrera lived until the age of 98, and each morning for breakfast he had a half-liter of fresh milk and a half-liter of Primitivo. His motto was also "Who loves and respects nature, loves God and himself". Amen!!!  Today it is the fifth generation of the family carrying on the traditions.