Perricone
Classic aromas of Perricone are: Strawberry, Black and Red Cherries, Black Plum, Milk Chocolate and Licorice
Perricone is a red grape varietal from the island of Sicily off the coast of southern Italy. No one quite knows how old this particular grape varietal is, it is thought to be a distant relative to the famous Sangiovese.
There are a mere 340ha of Perricone spread across Sicily, with an additional 280ha across the rest of mainland Italy. Perricone is most often blended into juicy red wines along with the more well known: Nero d'Avola, though recently a few single varietal bottlings have turned up.
Perricone produces wines that are medium-full bodied with respective tannins. Thankfully for the climate of Sicily the resulting wines have very ripe flavours with a real concentration of aromatics as well as soft tannins. The most important aromatics are red and black cherries, black plum and chocolate dipped cherries. A few examples, like that of Tasca's, is more fruit forward with very limited time in oak which gives more red fruit flavours, and other more oaky and age-worthy examples like that of Tamburello's.