Concentrated ripe plum, fig and cherry, spice and lots of oak. There are many "authentic" or"traditional" traits to this wine, but the oak treatment acts as a mask, like bad makeup, which results in an artificial and 'sugarfied' with cheap California-esque homogeneity. This is practised too often in Puglian primitivo's (and in many commercialized italian wines designated for the US market). For now, safer bets remain the negroamaro's, nero di troia's and the many value driven whites from the region