Here’s what Wine Spectator columnist Harvey Steiman had to say about the 2008 Primitivo by Cantele, tasted last year at one of his favorite San Francisco pizzerias, Gialina (photo via salt, teak, & fog).

My local pizzeria, Gialina in San Francisco, offers a short list of a half-dozen simple Italian wines to drink with such terrific pizzas as one with nettles and pancetta and another with winter squash, fresh ricotta and ricotta salata. One can wish for better glasses than the tumblers the restaurant uses, but the wines are not complex, just solid and fruity, and suffer little harm.

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Let’s face it: Highland, Indiana isn’t exactly what you’d call “smack-dab in the middle” of North America’s renaissance in Italian cuisine. In fact, it’s about as far away from house-cured prosciutto and certified verace pizza napoletana as a body can get.

That’s what a wine blogger discovered when he traveled through the steel-mill towns of Northwestern Indiana (Hammond, Munster, Highland, Gary) on a visit to his father (who’s retired there).

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This video featuring our winery was directed by a young Salentine filmmaker, Matteo Epifani, with cinematography by Corrado Punzi and a score by composer Mario S. Rugge.

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Photo via Appunti di Gola.

From the April 2009 issue of the Wine Advocate:

90/100 points

Cantele’s 2006 Amativo (Negroamaro, Primitivo) features the aromatic profile of Negroamaro wedded to the intensity of fruit typical of Primitivo.

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Above: Kyle Phillips (right) and Whitney Adams, author of Brunellos Have More Fun, traveled to Puglia in the fall of 2010 on a trip organized by top Italian wine blogger Franco Ziliani.

“Cantele is one of the estates I visited in the course of my trip to Puglia this fall,” wrote top Italian wine authority and blogger Kyle Phillips earlier this year, “and when I came upon their stand after a tasting of Puglian Rosés held this spring at Vinitaly, I was quite happy to taste through their new vintages. To be quite frank, the wines speak for themselves.”

Click here to read Kyle’s tasting notes from his visit to the Cantele stand at Vinitaly 2010.

Layered Tagliolini Nests with Rabbit Ragù

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Yesterday, after five years, our corporate site has done away with Flash coding. Goodbye animation, hello S[earch] E[ngine] O[ptimization]!

That’s not to say that we don’t care anymore about the high design of our new site, which has been created once again by the talented Elisa Costa.

But what’s even more important is that instead of identical, static information written in Italian and translated into English and German, we now have three independent blogs, each geared toward a different group of consumers.

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After all the mandatory information, tasting notes, and miniature design elements are added to the back labels of our bottles, there is very little free space left.

Every winemaker in the world wishes that she or he could be sitting next to the end consumer in the moment that the bottle is opened so that she or he could share every last detail of the story of that wine. Fortunately, technology gives us a helping hand in this regard and the opportunities to create a connection between paper labels and the internet continue to grow every day.

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I love risotto. Actually, I love rice in general and any recipe that calls for rice. Chef Orso knows this but it took 15 rounds at the stove before he decided to reward me with this dish. Risotto al Vino Rosso, made with red wine, the Cantele Winery’s Varius in this case, and one of my favorite traditional cheeses from Salento, Stracchinato, from the town of Otranto in the province of Lecce to be precise. The outcome? If you know what’s good for you, keep on reading… Read more

Okay, I’ll admit it: there was a moment when I thought about ripping up my ticket, buying a bathing suit and some flip flops and dropping off the grid. Miami is an extremely interesting city, the least “American” of all of the cities I’ve visited in the U.S. It’s cosmopolitan and interracial. Many ethnicities are represented there and there is a strong Latin American and Caribbean influence there. Read more