Winemaker Notes
Ruby red with a hint of purple in its early stages. On the nose red fruit notes, agreeable and persistent. It reveals itself as full-bodied, deep, ripe, round, harmonic and persistent with a final note of licorice.
It is best served with roasted red meat, braised meat, game, noble poultry, semi-matured cheeses. It is also an accompaniment to lamb and baby goat dishes.
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
A sweet blend of violets and lavender gives way to crushed blackberries and chalk dust lifts from the 2021 Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Riparosso. It washes across the palate with soft textures and ripe wild berry fruits that are neatly contrasted by sour citrus toward the close. This finishes perfumed and with admirable length, leaving a coating of dusty tannins that tug at the cheeks. Nicely done.
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James Suckling
Marasca cherry, licorice root, mint and fennel. The mid-palate, ferruginous and mid-weighted, in the most savory and meaty sense. This is one of those wines, inimitably Italian by virtue of its dry structural focus, that just needs a few years. Not too much time. Just a modicum of patience. Stay the path. Drinkable now, but best from 2025.
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.