Vincotto

Vincotto (lit. 'cooked wine') is a dark, sweet, thick paste produced in rural areas of Italy. It is made by the slow cooking and reduction over many hours of non-fermented grape must until it has been reduced to about one-fifth of its original volume and the sugars present have caramelized. It can be made from a number of varieties of local red wine grapes, including Primitivo, Negroamaro and Malvasia Nera, and before the grapes are picked they are allowed to wither naturally on the vine for about thirty days. In Roman times it was known as sapa in Latin and epsima in Greek, the same names that are often used for it in Italy and Cyprus, respectively, today.^[1]

The paste is made in the Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Lombardy, Apulia, Basilicata, Sardinia and Marche regions of Italy.