Copertino

Styles

Principal grape varieties

Accessory grape varieties

Terroir

• The territory's bedrock consists of a succession of layers and beds of limestone, dolomitic limestone and dolomite, over 6000 metres thick, deposited during the Jurassic and Cretaceous.
• On the floor of the lagoon that formed among the emerged islands, calcarenites locally called "tufi" were deposited, together with clays and sands that filled the tectonic depressions (grabens).
• The soils found in the area are the typical "terre rosse" (Alfisols), usually thin with lithic contact within 50 cm of the surface (Lithic Rhodoxeralfs) or moderately to very deep (Typic Rhodoxeralfs).
• The climate shows strong temperature swings with hot summers and mild winters, and average annual rainfall ranges from 400 to 1,200 mm, about 65% of it concentrated in the autumn-winter period.
• Viticulture is practised most successfully in areas where the soil is deep enough to make up for water scarcity and summer aridity.
• The production area covers the entire territory of the communes of Copertino, Carmiano, Arnesano and Monteroni and part of the communal territory of Galatina and Lequile, all in the province of Lecce.

• Between 1600 and 1700, about 2 million salme of wine left the ports of Otranto, Gallipoli and Brindisi for the markets of London, Berlin, Saint Petersburg and Barcelona.
• The first detailed accounts on the production of Copertino wines, organised according to a scientific approach, date back to the Statistics of the Kingdom of Naples ordered by Joachim Murat in 1811.

Facts drawn from the specification's terroir-link section by automatic interpretation — see the source.

All appellations in Italy

Sources

• eAmbrosia register (EU) — File number PDO-IT-A0547