Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Illuminati 2013 Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Colline Teramane Riserva Zanna offers black fruit, plum, spice, tar and an aged hint of licorice or ash. This wine unwinds in Slavonian oak cask for two years, an aging process that adds to the polished or dusty quality of its mouthfeel. This is a mid-weight red with smooth elegance and grace. It would make a friendly companion to some grilled porcini or portobello mushrooms.
-
Wine Enthusiast
Deep purple-ruby. Inky, flinty aromas and flavors are fresh, vibrant and very saline. Enters bright and smooth, then turns mountingly austere but with a glyceral touch to the long, mineral-enhanced fruit flavors.
-
James Suckling
Generous black-fruit character and, in spite of all the ripeness, a rather nice balance of fruit, fleshiness, moderately dry tannins and lively acidity. This would be a good choice for cassoulet or game stews.
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.