The definitive red for bonfire night

published 1 November 2013

2011 Villa Magna, Primitivo di Manduria, Puglia, Italy (£9.99, Marks & Spencer).

I spotted this wine three vintages ago when it first hit the shelves and it was a stunner it made my Daily Mail column. I must have missed the intervening two releases or perhaps just thought that they didn't make the grade because they didn't register at all.

This 2011 vintage is not only back to form, but it is an improvement on the lusty 2008, and for that reason it wins a spot in MoneyWeek.

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It's still the same price (thank you M&S) and you ought to make it your mission this week to track a few bottles down. Primitivo comes in many guises, but to my mind the genuine article is coiled tightly in this bottle awaiting its release.

The tar and roses nose is heavenly and with so much brutish strength and undeniable beauty shot through the inky onslaught it takes a minute or so for your brain to compute the complexities in the glass.

This is not a head-banger though. It is a rich, palate-drenching black wine with layers of chocolate and prune. It is this side of crazy and the oak is so perfectly judged it is incredible, and I reckon that it's the definitive bonfire-night red.

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (www.matthewjukes.com).

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’. He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner.

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy. His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.