Emidio Pepe, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, Italy, 2000

Overview of the Wine
This estate is too good to be true. The wines are amongst the best in Italy, the reds famous and the whites, in my view, just as good, and equally beautiful with age; the family that produces them is charming, three generations from Emidio himself (elegant in flat cap and red sweater vest) to his lovely, enthusiastic grand-daughter Chiara, who handles export markets, not to forget Emidio’s daughters Daniela and Sofia, who now run the winery; and the wines have been grown naturally and vinified using traditional techniques since the first vintage in 1964, perhaps the oldest and most genuine ‘natural wines’ in Italy, and not a hipster in sight. It’s just too perfect, the epitome of all good things in Old World viticulture; and it’s all real. Did I mention that the wines are breathtaking? And the Pepe family have a huge aging cellar where they keep large stocks of old wines, which are decanted to order by Emidio’s wife Rosa, so you can order old bottles of Pepe knowing that they’re genuine and that they’ve been stored perfectly. Ridiculous. 

The winemaking is a complete throwback, nothing changed in a hundred years. The vineyards are planted using plants from massal selection of their own oldest vineyards, not clones, and are farmed biodynamically.

Grape / Blend
Montepulciano

Origin
d'Abruzzo, Italy

Tasting Notes
The Montepulciano bears little relation to most other wines of this appellation. These wines are big and bold, filled with intense flavors of dried black cherries, licorice and wild herbs. With a great belief that Mother Nature is the best care-giver for the vines, grapes are grown biodynamically, hand-harvested, hand-destemmed, naturally fermented and aged 18-24 months in glass-lined tanks. The wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered, without added SO2, and aged in their cellar, in bottle, for continued development.

Very deep red-black when young, with aromas and flavors of raw meat, black fruit (including blackcurrant), expensive leather, hints of bacon, ink, and dry-cured olive; a big, beefy wine but not bitter or alcoholic, surprisingly fresh in most vintages for such a substantial wine. Older bottles shade to Hermitage-like brickish red with aromas and flavors of berries, roast meat, forest-floor, dried orange-peel, and many others, with superb elegant texture.

97 Points - Wine Enthusiast
Rustic and well-structured, offering an attractive mix of mature spice box, leather and forest floor notes, with a concentrated core of wild cherry and gamy blackberry fruit. Full-bodied, featuring a long, chewy finish of coffee and iron. Non-blind Emidio Pepe vertical (May 2013). Best from 2015 through 2030.

95 Points - Vinous
The utterly classic 2000 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Vecchie Vigne wafts up with an earthy mix of underbrush, savory herbs and musky animal tones before releasing its hints of mulled cherry and crushed plums. This enters the palate with the silkiest of textures that communicate pure elegance and balance. Ripe red fruits saturate and leave a mineral staining under an air of tobacco. Through it all, a core of vibrant acidity maintains perfect balance. The 2000 finishes lightly structured, long and buzzing with energy. This textbook vintage of Emidio Pepe is a pure pleasure to taste and has many years of steady, positive evolution packed into it. That said, make sure to give the wine some time to open in bottle to really unlock its aromatics. What a darling.

Product size: 750ml