Moscato di Trani DOC

A sweet Moscato from the limestone of the Murge, made in Trani and its neighbouring communes on the Adriatic coast north of Bari. It is one of the oldest continuously made sweet wines in the south and one of the least seen.

The Terroir The registered file is unusually specific about a hard place to farm. The territory sits in the central part of the Murge plateau on the eastern side of the peninsula, protected from cold and humid winds by the Apennine chain. The vineyards occupy soils of modest depth and high stoniness over compact limestones. The climate is sub-Mediterranean, very hot in summer and cold in winter; average annual rainfall is 560 mm, and the file notes that the scarcity of water — worsened by the karst, which swallows what does fall — forces growers to draw on artesian sources.

Grape Varieties Moscato Bianco, known locally as Moscato Reale or simply Moscato di Trani. The file describes a golden-yellow wine with an intense, characteristic aroma and a sweet, velvety, harmonious palate. Two types are registered: a dolce naturale, where the sweetness comes from arrested fermentation of very ripe grapes, and a liquoroso, fortified.

The Critical Take Southern sweet Moscato has to answer two questions: why not Pantelleria, and why not simply a passito? Trani’s answer is the limestone. The wine is markedly less unctuous than Sicilian Muscat — more apricot and orange blossom than dried fig, with a saline finish and enough acidity to stay lively at fourteen degrees. It is also very cheap, because sweet wine sells badly and Puglia has no reputation for it whatsoever. The dolce naturale is the one to look for; the fortified version is the older tradition and the heavier drink.

Trani The town is worth the detour independently of the wine. Its Romanesque cathedral stands directly on the harbour, built of the local white stone and effectively floating at the sea’s edge; the Ordinamenta et consuetudo maris drawn up here in 1063 is among the oldest maritime codes in Europe. This was a Crusader port, and its wine went out through it.

Water, and the Lack of It The file’s note about artesian water is the honest constraint of the whole Murge. Five hundred and sixty millimetres of rain, most of it in winter, on shallow soil over fissured limestone that holds nothing: the vine survives here by rooting into rock, and the resulting concentration is exactly why the grapes make good sweet wine and poor bulk wine.

At the Table Puglian almond pastries, cartellate with vincotto at Christmas, dried figs, and aged pecorino. Serve at 10–12°C.

Benchmark Producers Rivera, Torrevento, Nugnes.