To find great values in Italian wine, look to Abruzzo
A new generation of exacting growers and winemakers has brought vitality to an Italian region known for its cheap wines
THE Abruzzo region of eastern central Italy, on the Adriatic coast, is home to montepulciano d’Abruzzo, a popular red wine that paradoxically has been historically little known and rarely very good.
Its popularity owed to one main factor: It was a cheap wine that was usually good enough.
The last decade in the region, though, has seen a sea change. With the arrival of a new generation of ambitious growers and winemakers dedicated to conscientious farming and meticulous winemaking, Abruzzo’s wine scene is exciting, and not just for its reds. Abruzzo is making some of the best whites in Italy, and its Cerasuolos d’Abruzzo, roses dark enough to be light reds, are singular. Prices, with a few important exceptions, are still reasonable.
This new wave includes such small family producers as Tiberio in Cugnoli, Cirelli Wines near Atri, De Fermo in Loreto Aprutino, Colle Florido in Pianella and Antica Tenuta Pietramore in Controguerra.
These estates are relatively new and differ in philosophies and styles. Yet all are idealistic and share a goal of making wines that are not only delicious but true to the heritage and identity of their part of Abruzzo, a proud but undervalued region of stunning beauty, great food and welcoming people.
Abruzzo is long and narrow, influenced both by the sea and the mountains. The Adriatic is to the east. To the west, separating Abruzzo from Lazio and Rome, is the snow-capped Gran Sasso, a massif that is part of the Apennine range and rises to almost 10,000 feet.
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In between are towns and villages where small farmers tended plots of montepulciano, trebbiano and pecorino. Like Riás Baixas in Spain, home of albariño, Abruzzo is one of very few regions that still typically employs pergola structures that train the vines overhead.
These farmers historically sold their grapes to cooperatives and big producers. With a few profound exceptions, such as Emidio Pepe and Edoardo Valentini, whose expensive wines were among the best in Italy and illustrated the region’s tantalising potential, Abruzzo plodded on.
Ambitious, well-financed producers began to enter the picture in the 1980s and 90s. Their strategy too often, in the fashion of the times, was to put wine in new barrels of French oak, producing powerful, oaky wines that were never to my taste.
Abruzzo today seems a different, more creative place. Nobody embodies the new Abruzzo so much as Cristiana Tiberio, a dynamo who, when she is not home managing the Tiberio estate with her brother, Antonio Tiberio, tirelessly travels the world spreading word of Abruzzo’s charms. More than anything, she believes in Abruzzo’s culture and identity and wants to make wines that speak of both.
The Tiberio estate began in 2000 when her father, Riccardo Tiberio, bought a vineyard containing old vines of trebbiano Abruzzese, a grape distinct from the more widely planted and inferior trebbiano Toscano. Confusingly, either grape can go into the wine, trebbiano d’Abruzzo. But trebbiano Abruzzese can reach far greater heights.
Cristiana and Antonio Tiberio took over from their father in 2008 and worked to restore the old vines. Since 2011, they have produced Fonte Canale, a trebbiano d’Abruzzo bottling from this vineyard that is arguably among Italy’s greatest white wines.
The 2021 Fonte Canale is a brilliant wine, with an almost Chablis-like salinity and mineral tang yet with a texture all its own. You can enjoy a glass, close your eyes and contemplate.
New bottles can cost US$80 to US$100, but the less expensive Tiberio wines, around US$25, are all excellent as well, dry, refreshing, clear and precise.
Around an hour north of Tiberio, Francesco and Michela Cirelli have created an idyllic farm where grapevines cover only a small fraction of the diverse land. Francesco Cirelli grew up in Pescara, Abruzzo’s big coastal city, but his grandparents were farmers. Longing for a connection to the earth, he bought his land in 2003 and in addition to grapes, grows figs, olives and chickpeas and raises animals.
Cirelli makes two lines of wines. One, from purchased grapes, goes into steel tanks for brief aging. The trebbiano d’Abruzzo is fresh, bright and saline, while the montepulciano d’Abruzzo is well-balanced and refreshingly bitter.
“These are the wines that pay the bills,” he said.
The estate grapes, all aged in amphorae, are different. The trebbiano d’Abruzzo is more complex, with dimension and a richer texture, while the montepulciano d’Abruzzo is more structured, lovely young but with the capability to age. The Cirelli Cerasuolo from amphorae is complex, saline and mineral, a wonderful wine.
South of Cirelli, Andrea Ugolotti of Colle Florido was a top sommelier working in Paris when he decided he wanted to make wine and start a family. With his contacts in the wine world, he could have settled anywhere. But his wife, Daniela Trolio, was from Abruzzo, and, though he didn’t know Abruzzo’s wines well, they decided it would be a great place to rear children. And it was affordable.
In Abruzzo, Ugolotti has gone his own way, making pure, lovely wines in his tiny cellar. He steers clear of much of the Abruzzo wine community, though he loves to speak with older people about how they used to farm. But he is not bound by traditions. He doesn’t like Cerasuolo, for example, preferring instead to make a lighter-colored rosato. His 2022 was gorgeous, full of salty minerality.
“We believe 100 per cent in our terroir,” he said. “We are here, Daniela and me, to write our story. I don’t want to compromise. I don’t want to be the best. I don’t want to do what the others do. There’s only one Pepe, only one Valentini.”
Valentini and Pepe, whom wine writer Matt Kramer once called Abruzzo’s “resident eccentric geniuses”, are still making exceptional wines. They both employed highly idiosyncratic and, in the case of Valentini, secretive methods to make complex, long-lived wines.
“Valentini and Pepe were like tillers and anchors of the region,” Cirelli said.
Valentini, now run by Francesco Valentini, son of Edoardo, who died in 2006, maintains its secretive distance from the hurly-burly of the wine industry. But Emidio Pepe, now 90, met me in November in Torano Nuovo, in the northern reaches of Abruzzo near Le Marche. Pepe was a forward-thinking, experimental farmer whose first vintage was in 1964. He bought land when he could, generally unplanted, so he could put in genetically diverse, massal selection vines rather than the clones that were popular.
His granddaughter Chiara, 30, has recently taken over management of viticulture and winemaking and continues with the estate’s farsighted approach. The Pepes farm biodynamically, and Chiara Pepe is moving towards eliminating tilling to minimise carbon emissions. Like so many farmers, she is battling the effects of climate change, taking steps to prolong ripening and cope with increases in heat, wind and extreme weather.
“We’re fighting the compression that global warming imposes on our growing cycle,” she said.
Chiara Pepe has made some changes in the cellar, too. Since 2020, she’s made single-vineyard wines of two oldest parcels of montepulciano. One, a 2020 Casa Pepe, was closed up tight, far too young to enjoy, evidence of why Pepe wines benefit from long ageing.
Pepe holds back significant portions of each vintage at the winery for additional aging, which pays off. A 2005 montepulciano d’Abruzzo was floral, complex and graceful, just beginning to show evolved, mushroom-like aromas. A 1975 was absolutely gorgeous, the tannins long since absorbed into the wine.
Chiara Pepe sees Abruzzo as a land of unlimited potential. She sees a sense of freedom along with farmland that’s available at affordable prices.
“I hope that people come here,” she said. “It could be incredible for any kid who wants to rent land and a garage to vinify.” NYTIMES
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