2017 Emidio Pepe Montepulciano d' Abruzzo

Emidio Pepe is in Abruzzo. The 37-acre estate has its roots in the 19th century when Emidio Pepe and his wife Rosa started growing grapes in the hills of Torano Nuovo. By the 1940s their son was making wine and today the estate is run by the grand daughters and a great-grand daughter of the founders. Emidio Pepe produces Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, Trebbiano d’Abruzzo, Pecorino and Rosato wines. Robert M. Parker Jr. has written the estate “treats fruit and the resulting wines with the utmost care…tasting a well-preserved bottle of Emidio Pepe’s Montepulciano is a real treat as the wines can be superb.”

Abruzzo is a mountainous region on the Adriatic coast, about half way down Italy. With 83,000 vineyard acres it ranks 10th in size among Italy’s appellations. Though the Apennines, the mountains that define the region, keep Abruzzo off the usual routes for wine tourism, Abruzzo is Italy’s fifth most productive wine region. It makes nearly twice as much wine as Tuscany, but until recently most Abruzzo wines were mass produced and poor in quality. In recent years, however, boutique producers have established themselves in Abruzzo and Gambero Rosso in 2016 wrote that Abruzzo wines are increasingly “better defined and of better quality…. We see an ever more convincing rediscovery of roots and traditional techniques.” Abruzzo has one DOCG, for Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Colline Teramane, and three DOCs, including one for the red wine Montepulciano d’Abruzzo and one for the white Trebbiano d’Abruzzo. The third DOC is Controguerra, which includes many red and white wines made of a wide variety of grapes. Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, the grape, is often confused with the Tuscan town of Montepulciano. Montepulciano d’Abruzzo is a deeply dark, tannic grape that was once thought to be related to Sangiovese, though that has now been disproven. Classic Montepulciano d’Abruzzo wines are recognizable for flavors of blackberry nuanced with earthiness.