Winemaker Notes
Deep dense intense ruby red color, with a purple viscous rim. Intense nose with ripe blackberry, wild strawberry and spices. Powerful and expansive on the palate, with ripe tannins and great balance. Round and fresh ending, long-lasting, with aromatic persistence.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
An alluring nose of charred herbs, pitted black cherries and rose. Full-bodied with silky tannins. Vibrant and succulent with lots of lovely depth and complexity. Rather supple and elegant. Delicious. Drink or hold.
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Wine Enthusiast
Fresh dill and thyme lend a heady dose of herb to the plump black cherry and blackberry core in this red. It’s polished and full in nature, with rounded cherry and plum flavors meet- ing cohesive accents of clove, fresh herbs and cigar wrapper. Anise and grippy cherry skins linger on the finish.
Montepulciano is the second most planted red variety in Italy after Sangiovese, though it is achieves its highest potential in the region of Abruzzo. Consistently enticing and enjoyable, Montepulciano enjoys great popularity throughout central and southern Italy as well. A tiny bit grows with success in California, Argentina and Australia. Somm Secret—Montepulciano is also the name of a village in Tuscany where, confusingly, they don’t grow the Montepulciano grape at all! Sangiovese shines in yet another Tuscan village, here making the reputable wine called Vino Nobile di Montepulciano.
A warm, Mediterranean vine-growing paradise, in Abruzzo, the distance from mountains to seaside is relatively short. The Apenniness, which run through the center of Italy, rise up on its western side while the Adriatic Sea defines its eastern border.
Wine composition tends to two varieties: Abruzzo’s red grape, Montepulciano and its white, Trebbiano. Montepulciano d’Abruzzo can come in a quaffable, rustic and fruity style that generally drinks best young. It is also capable of making a more serious style, where oak aging tames its purely wild fruit.
Trebbiano in Abruzzo also comes in a couple of varieties. Trebbiano Toscana makes a simple and fruity white. However when meticulously tended, the specific Trebbiano d’Abruzzo-based white wines can be complex and long-lived.
In the region’s efforts to focus on better sites and lower yields, vine acreage has decreased in recent years while quality has increased.