A Guide To The Wine of Abruzzo, Italy

The Italian region of Abruzzo is one of the country's biggest wine producers - yet compared to some of Italy's better-known exports like Chianti, Barolo and Frascati, Abruzzo's wines are still relatively unknown, and David Brenner reckons it's time for a change.

The basics first: Abruzzo is Italy's fifth-largest production region. Each year, it makes enough to fill 200 Olympic-size pools, but only 20% of that wine made actually gets bottled and sold as "Abruzzo wine".

Best not enquire too deeply what happens to the rest!

If you're a red wine fan, you might already be familiar with Montepulciano D'Abruzzo, a wonderfully versatile red ready to be drunk just scant weeks after being harvested as "vino novello" each November; yet good enough to achieve Italy's top-rated DOCG status too.

And the Montepulciano grape also produces the blush wine called Cerasuolo, a fairly hefty, niche market summer slurper you might like if you're looking for something a bit more assertive in pink than ordinary rose.

The majority of Abruzzo whites are made from the Trebbiano grape, of which too much is mind-numbingly ordinary and too little is outstanding. But when you do stumble across an outstanding bottle, it's like a jolt of summer lightning, redolent of elderflowers, angelica and green apple.

At Villasfor2, we've snaffled an incredibly good Trebbiano just like the one in the lead-in photo above from the small San Valentino co-op just outside Ortona as our own house white, which went down a storm on its debut in 2013.

But the white that's really making waves in Abruzzo right now is made from the Pecorino grape - a local heritage variety rescued from the brink of extinction in the 1990's and now producing some staggeringly good wine.

If you like white wine made from the Viognier grape, you'll love Pecorino, because it has those same luscious undertones of peach and apricot that Viognier boasts.

Underlining its quality, a 2009 Pecorino made by the new and rapidly-rising Tenuta Ulisse winery near us took the double-whammy of Best Pecorino and overall Best Italian White at the 2010 International Wine Challenge in London.

Underlining its value, that same gold-medal winner was on sale here for a shade under 10 Euro a bottle, and worth twice that.

Pushing the boundaries ever-further, a growing number of Abruzzo wineries are now producing a sparkling Pecorino. With variable results, it has to be said, but one of the originals - and for me, still one of the very best - can be found at Cantina Colle Moro.

At under 5 Euro a bottle, you'd be forgiven at looking askance at this, but it really is right up there with the best Prosecco and I reckon with a little more sum and substance to it as well.

Which leads us to the reds.

Since 2003, Montepulciano from the northern Abruzzo province of Teramo has enjoyed top DOCG status.

But because nothing in Italy is ever remotely simple, don't let that fool you into thinking that only Teramo produces top-class Montepulciano. Because it doesn't.

Redrafting of Italian wine rankings could soon see a new rash of DOCG Montepulciano from all over the region and there are genuinely so many massively excellent wines available, that aside from saying that if you're looking at Teramo, you won't go far wrong if the names of top wineries like Illuminati, Villa Medoro or Nicodemi are on the label, it makes more sense for me to concentrate on the excellent reds produced on my own patch here in Chieti province, in Abruzzo's south.

I said a little earlier that Montepulciano was a versatile grape, and here are three wines that bear that out.

From the stellar Masciarelli winery, by common consent, one of Abruzzo's top-3, is the liquid velvet of the "Marina Cvetic Montpulciano", a top-of-the-range line named for the wife of the winery's late driving forcer Gianni Masciarelli. It's a wine of depth and potency, nudging 15%, with an initial dryness opening into a mouth-filling burst of trademark red cherry, with almost claret-like hints of tobacco and liquorice.

Or head for the Pasetti winery near the Adriatic Coast and pick-up a bottle of their fabulous, racy Testarossa, which surely has the most eye-catching label and sexiest bottle which is a match for any premium wine!

A little lighter and more approachable perhaps than the Masciarelli offering, but again with that zingy cherry and red fruit juiciness that's so instantly appealing.

The good news is that both these are available outside Italy.The bad news is they'll cost you more than the 15-20 Euro you'll pay here.

And so to the final bottle. And hereby hangs a tale.

In 2011, the Cantina Orsogna co-op from the small inland town of Orsogna was named "Abruzzo Winery of the Year" ... cue polite applause.

In 2012, the prestigious VinItaly organisation made Cantina Orsogna their "Italian Winery of the Year" which was simply sensational, because Cantina Orsogna is a basically just a small cantina with a product range of scarcely a dozen different wines.

But what wines they are.

Even so, you don't get named Italy's best winery for just making nice wines. No. But where Cantina Orsogna are making a name for themselves is in producing some almost supernaturally good blended wines and the jewel in their crown is an 80% Montepulciano, 20% Merlot blend called "Malverno", which at the last count had picked up enough gold medals at wine expos around Europe to rival Usain Bolt.

Here's a wine of extraordinary depth and complexity, with Montepulciano "up-front" qualities tempered, softened and lengthened by the addition of Merlot. It's a heady (14.5%) voluptuous wine, and at about 10 Euro a bottle, a steal.

Do you remember those so-called "Super Tuscans" of the 1990's? They've largely run their course now, so maybe the time's right for a new breed of "Super Abruzzans"? 

Though Cantina Orsogna also makes a wonderful organic Montepulciano - and organic wine is becoming a huge growth area right across Italy - it's their innovative and top-quality blends, executed with incredible skill and attention to detail, that‚'ss rightly earned them their accolades.

If you come across their wines, buy them and see for yourself what the fuss is all about.