Features
Name:
Montepulciano d'Abruzzo DOC 2021 'Triple A'
Terrain:
Clayey limestone
Cellar
On the hills of Torano Nuovo, a municipality in the province of Teramo where the microclimate is characterised as much by the sea breezes that blow from the Adriatic towards the hinterland as by the cold currents that come from the peaks of the Gran Sasso, we find the 15 hectares owned by Emidio Pepe with clay and limestone soils and a ventilated microclimate with good temperature excursions. An ideal habitat for Montepulciano and Trebbiano, Emidio, before anyone else, believed in the great potential of these two symbolic vines of the area. It is since 1964, the year of birth of this magnificent reality, that Emidio Pepe, after having worked alongside his father and, above all, his grandfather who had been making wine at the Pepe house since 1899, has stubbornly fought against intensive cultivation systems, against the standardisation of technological wines and against the degeneration of the market.
Today, the Pepe winery has gradually switched from the organic to the biodynamic method: Emidio, with 50 years of harvesting behind him, has been able to perfectly regulate plant nutrition, soil tillage, pruning and vine vegetation, limiting all types of intervention in the vineyard and cellar. Only natural products such as copper crystals, mine sulphur and biodynamic preparations are used. This is the philosophy that the Pepe family applies step by step in the process that leads to the production of its wine, which is always vinified in cement with ageing without the use of wooden barrels in the cellar.
Description
Emidio Pepe's Montepulciano is one of those reds capable of defying time, extremely representative of a territory, Teramo, from 30-year-old vines resting on clayey, medium-textured soil. In the vineyard, the dictates of organic farming are scrupulously followed, integrating them with some biodynamic practices, although the idea of grapes and healthy soil was already inherent in Emidio's mentality. In the cellar, manual destemming of the grapes and spontaneous alcoholic fermentation in vitrified cement tanks is followed by bottling and decanting by hand without filtration.
Organoleptic characteristics:
Intense ruby red colour. Complex nose with intense aromas of red fruit and spices, with hints of graphite, earth and undergrowth. The palate is structured and elegant with vital tannins and a long persistence of spices and fruit.
Storage time:
2-10 years
Vinification
The grapes ferment naturally in cement tanks without the addition of selected yeasts, spontaneous fermentation in vitrified cement tanks. In order to maintain all the original organoleptic properties, the wine is neither clarified nor filtered.
Acknowledgements
2020 Robert Parker 95/100
2020 Bibenda 
2020 Vitae AIS 
