Administrative area · Italy
Abruzzo
A mountainous Adriatic region producing large volumes of soft Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.
About Abruzzo
Montepulciano d’Abruzzo is one of Italy’s most reliable inexpensive reds: deeply coloured, soft-tannined, plummy and easy.
The grape Montepulciano has nothing to do with the Tuscan town of Montepulciano, whose wine (Vino Nobile di Montepulciano) is made from Sangiovese — a genuinely confusing collision of names.
Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo, a deeply coloured rosé from the same grape, has its own DOC.
No authority delimits this name or attaches rules to it. A political unit — an Italian region, an English county, a US county — used as a wine area because that is how the industry and its readers talk about it, not because a wine authority delimited it. That does not make it less real or less useful — it means nothing legal follows from it, and you will not generally find it on a label as a controlled designation.
Grapes
Wines from here
red
Montepulciano d’Abruzzo
Soft, deeply coloured, plummy Italian red at consistently low prices — and unrelated to the Tuscan town of Montepulciano.
white
Trebbiano d’Abruzzo
Mostly simple everyday white, but capable of remarkable depth from the small number of producers using the true Trebbiano Abruzzese.
Climate
Contradictory and useful: the Apennines to the west and the Adriatic to the east give hot days, cool nights and reliable ventilation.
These are influences on how a wine turns out, not determinants of it. Picking date, yield, vine age and every winemaking decision sit between the climate and the glass.
Soil and geology
Clay and limestone in the hills, alluvial gravel nearer the coast.
WineHQ describes soil in terms of what it demonstrably does — drainage, heat retention, water supply, rooting depth — and not in terms of flavours it is said to transmit. Vines take up ions, not aromas, and no mechanism has been demonstrated by which a mineral in the ground is tasted in the glass. See soil and drainage.
Places within it
- Montepulciano d’Abruzzo — The Montepulciano grape in Abruzzo — nothing to do with the Tuscan town of the same name, and one of Italy’s best-value reds.
What to eat, and how to serve it
Derived from this region’s signature styles. Each is listed separately, because a region does not have one serving temperature.
Sources
Sources consulted
- Italian DOP and IGP wine register — Ministero dell’agricoltura, della sovranità alimentare e delle foreste (MASAF)