Winemaker Notes
Zanna is intense ruby red in color, turning garnet with time. There are hints of blackberry, berry fruits, and dried flowers on the nose. On the palate the wine has great texture and soft tannins, with an elegant and long finish.
It will pair perfectly with red meat, game, truffles, and aged cheeses, particularly gorgonzola.
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2018 Colline Teramane Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Riserva Zanna is quite backward today, dark and brooding. Exotic spice and black currants form its understated bouquet. This is a more lifted and fresh style for Zanna, with round, supple textures and ripe citrus-tinged black fruits. Edgy tannins linger through the mentholated finale as hints of spiced cherry fade slowly.
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James Suckling
A variety so firm and ferrous; savoury, chewy and pithy of fruit, that its ugly duckling youth, all shins and elbows, can often contradict the drift into a calmer, layered and soothing middle to long age. This, a case in point. Dried tobacco, walnut husk, Chinotto and a slather of oak is all a bit excessive. The sweetness of fruit expands across its course in the finish. Scored optimistically. Drink or hold.
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.