But why does Velvet Black have this name? Many times there is a lot of legitimate curiosity. Many people, when they come to visit the cellar, give the most diverse answers: because it is a wine that is soft and velvety in the mouth, because its color is reminiscent of black velvet, etc.
None of this. Its name, however, takes us back to a very beautiful and intriguing story.
In fact, we could define Nero di Velluto as a “modern negroamaro conceived in 1918”. Its story finds the inspirational source of its name in a 1918 article entitled “The Harvest in Salento”, published in the Milanese magazine “Varietas”, written by the Salento photographer and journalist Giuseppe Palumbo and which fortuitously happened among the many “paperwork” deposited in our cellar. In one passage of the correspondence he wrote: “…And at the foot of every vine everything has become velvet black, everything is ripe, deliciously fragrant.”
To tell the full story, it must be said that this wine was born to correct an “accident” of nature. It was 2002 and the year was one to forget. Consequently, it was decided to change the “harvest strategy” during the work by drying the best Negroamaro bunches from a sapling-grown vineyard in single-layer wooden boxes for about thirty days.
The resulting wine, approximately 18 hectolitres, was aged in 8 second wine barriques from a famous Burgundy winery. Thus Nero di Velluto was born: very few bottles, two thousand two hundred and ninety-eight, all numbered by hand and truly extraordinary.
In 2018 the Nero di Velluto label underwent an improved restyling which made the bottle more elegant and in line with contemporary stylistic trends. Its content, the wine, has passed “exams” and appreciation from the public and critics every year: in fact, there have been nine consecutive years in which it has been awarded the 5 Bibenda bunches and the 4 AIS vines!
