Collection: Montepulciano

Montepulciano is a complicated grape variety — it requires specific climatic conditions to ripen properly and, equally important, truly talented winemakers who strive to understand it down to the last detail. The combination of both factors is relatively rare, which explains why there still aren’t that many truly outstanding Montepulcianos.

If you read up on the grape and listen to winemakers talk about it, you inevitably start to wonder why it’s planted so widely in the first place: Montepulciano is one of those varieties that ripens asynchronously — meaning you’ll often find both green and red berries within the same cluster. Despite the fact that it often produces robust, full-bodied wines, the grape itself is quite sensitive and disease-prone. It’s susceptible to powdery mildew and reacts poorly to both excess and lack of rainfall. If harvested too early, it delivers unpleasantly bitter, green flavors; too late, and it tends to accumulate too much sugar while rapidly losing acidity.

And yet, nearly 32,000 hectares are planted with it: 18,000 of those in Abruzzo, where it enjoys an almost monopolistic status in red wine production — but also in the Marche (where it's likewise the dominant red variety), as well as in Umbria, Molise, Apulia, Lazio, and Tuscany (not to be confused with the town of Montepulciano, where Vino Nobile di Montepulciano is made from Sangiovese).

The best Montepulcianos I know come from Abruzzo —

1. From the area around the medieval town of Loreto Aprutino, where the vines grow at around 300 meters altitude in a triangle between the Gran Sasso and Majella mountain ranges and the Adriatic Sea — an area offering near-perfect climatic conditions.

2. From the Valle Peligna, the presumed birthplace of Montepulciano.

3. And from the hills surrounding Teramo, a clay-rich landscape of rolling vineyards.

Ideally, these areas produce wines that unite the many positive — yet all too rarely harmonized — attributes of Montepulciano: where substance and power are buffered by vitality; where alcohol is balanced by acidity and ripe tannins; and where the often overwhelming spiciness steps back to allow fresh fruit aromas and earthy, mineral tones to come forward.

P.S.: Montepulciano also makes for surprisingly exciting rosé wines, marketed under the name Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo.

P.P.S.: And then there’s Ratafià — a liqueur made from Montepulciano and cherry distillate that belongs to the Abruzzo mountain culture as much as tripe to Rome or tortellini to Bologna. Ratafià tastes fantastic, though it’s not easy to find. Anyone heading to Abruzzo should definitely pick up a bottle.