Winemaker Notes
When aged, Emidio Pepe’s Trebbiano has the complex aroma and balanced texture of very good white Burgundy, with notes of lemon-peel, parmesan rind, herbs, and baked apple. Italy makes relatively few classic ageworthy white wines, and this is one of them.
Professional Ratings
-
Vinous
The most inviting mix of lemon oils, musky pear and peach, raw almond, ginger, iodine and yellow flowers wafts up from the 2019 Trebbiano d’Abruzzo Vecchie Vigne. It’s pliant, yet almost buoyant, seeming to hover across the palate with notes of apricot and salty mineral tones that are nicely offset by a pretty inner sweetness. The 2019 becomes perfumed throughout the saline-tinged finale, as inner florals slowly taper off. There’s a density and balance here that should unfold beautifully over the course of the next decade.
Compared to other white wine-producing varieties, Trebbiano claims some of the most vineyard acreage on a global scale. There are six distinct varieties with Trebbiano as part of their name in Italy alone. Trebbiano Toscano, one of the most popular, is deliciously light and crisp. Trebbiano d’Abruzzo actually has some aging potential when handled carefully. Somm Secret—Known as Ugni Blanc in France, Trebbiano is responsible for the whites in Southwest, France called Gascogne Blanc.
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.