Montepulciano d'Abruzzo 1997

Grape varieties: Montepulciano

A warm vintage, across Europe. The Montepulciano is reflecting the warm sensation without loosing its backbone.

Is “the king” of the Abruzzo varietals. Emidio Pepe describes it as the wine of the future for its immediate beauty and his aging potential.

Selezione vecchie vigne

As a winery our philosophy has always been to age our wine and we pride ourselves to be able to release back vintages direct from our cellar. For this and also because we don’t like our younger wine to travel we have had separate releasing for the local market and global market. In our home country we release our younger vintages which are produced from our younger vineyards, whereas, for the global market we only release wines from our aging cellar which has been produced from our older vineyards - “vecchie vigne”. We make two different bottlings, those grapes coming from our oldest plots would go straight into the aging cellar after the vinification and we wait at least 5 years until releasing them for the first time and those coming from the younger vines are released into the italian market after two - three years. To stop the confusion we will now be labeling our older vines wine with the stamp “Vecchie Vigne” you see below. The important difference for the Vecchie Vigne selection is especially in the longer time they spend in the cellar, as with time our wine gain stability and the ability of travelling without changing the flavors profile during the long journeys. Another key aspect of the wine labelled as ‘Vecchie Vigne’ is that every bottle from this batch that has more than 10 years of aging is decanted before being released: allowing us from the winery to make an extra check and to guarantee each one of the bottles that exit the winery. To better explain the difference in vintages: the current release in Italy is 2017 Montepulciano which comes from our younger plots whereas the current release in USA and Asia and Australia is 2012 Montepulciano, coming from our oldest plots. So, if you are in America, Asia or anywhere outside of Europe and you see any younger vintage than 2012 Montepulciano it means they are younger vines wine which have been brought over through unauthorized market. Likewise if you are in Europe, outside of Italy if you find vintages younger than 2015 Montepulciano