Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
who saw the vines and tasted the wine while
traveling around Sulmona in 1792. How Mon-
tepulciano arrived in Abruzzo has long been a
matter of conjecture: many believe it arrived
from Tuscany (though there is no early record
of a Montepulciano grapevine grown in that
region) with the Medici family, who created the
Baronia di Carapelle and the Marchesato di
Capestrana in Abruzzo between 1549 and 1743.
What is certain is that Montepulciano, wher-
ever it originated from, quickly spread to other
regions of central and even southern Italy.
Unfortunately, Montepulciano has always been
confused with Sangiovese: as recently as the
beginning of the twentieth century, all of Italy's
most important ampelographers failed to dis-
tinguish between the two varieties. Which is
strange, because Michele Torcia (1793) wrote of
the grape as clearly different from Sangiovese,
describing its presence in Abruzzo more than
two centuries ago; furthermore, Serafi ni in
1853 also separated an earlier ripening Mon-
tepulciano Primaticcio from a Montepulciano
Cordisco, the latter being the true Montepul-
ciano. Part of the diffi culty lies in the ancient
habit of renaming grapes for the name of the
town or region they came from. For this reason
some experts believe that Prugnolo Gentile,
typical of the town of Montepulciano and the
surrounding area in Tuscany, upon arriving in
Abruzzo was renamed Montepulciano. Never-
theless, current thinking is that the variety
originated in the Val Peligna area of Abruzzo
and that the Mazzara (or Mezzara) and the
Tabassi families were the fi rst to replant Mon-
tepulciano vines in nearby areas such as Torre
dei Passeri, Tocco de Casauria, and Musellaro
(Cercone 2000). In fact, Bruni wrote in 1962
that a common synonym of Montepulciano was
Torre dei Passeri, a fact he had already noted in
1955 while taking part in a national ampelo-
graphic commission.
Federico Staderini, a well-known Tuscan
winemaker, points out that Montepulciano is a
diffi cult variety in that, like many other native
grapes, its berries experience asynchronous
maturation: “Right in the same bunch you see
grapes of different hues; if you add to that, that
the must has a tendency to pick up off odors,
it's no picnic.” Fausto Albanesi of the excellent
Torre dei Beati estate mentions that for such a
hearty, big wine, the variety itself isn't that dis-
ease resistant: “We fi nd our Pecorino vines can
stand up to disease much better than Mon-
tepulciano, at least in our experience.” Con-
cezio Marulli of the Zaccagnini estate loves the
variety's color and fl exibility, both in the vine-
yard and the cellar. The color is due to Mon-
tepulciano's rich endowment of anthocyanins,
a wealth that allows Abruzzo producers to
make their
rosato
wines (called Cerasuolo) with
little or no maceration of the skins.
Water stress is also a concern with Mon-
tepulciano (though not as much as with San-
giovese), and so deleafi ng has to be done cau-
tiously. Many cheap, neutral, and uninteresting
wines are made using the high-yielding tendon
trellising system (
tenda
means tent; a
tendone
is
a big tent), since the raised canopy of leaves cov-
ers the grapes hanging below. You'd never
expect grapes to ripen properly or fully with
such a high-yielding production system, yet
Italy's best Montepulciano wine, actually one of
Italy's ten or twelve best reds, is made by Valen-
tini with nothing but big tents in sight. Clearly,
the canopy has to be thinned somewhat to allow
a certain amount of sunlight through. Still, so
much for theory in wine. Cristiana Tiberio of
the up-and-coming high-quality Tiberio estate,
helps put this into perspective: “Personally, I
view climate as the most important factor for
quality Montepulciano production: being a late-
ripening variety, it needs a long growing sea-
son, so as to ripen slowly and fully; otherwise,
the pips don't ripen properly and wines will be
bitter. Plus it's very susceptible to oidium,
which is more likely to hit in warmer
climates.”
A sure sign of Montepulciano's importance
is the almost endless number of clones availa-
ble, among which are different series: AP-MP
(1 and 3), VCR series (7, 100, 453 through 456,
462, 496, 498), UBA-RA MP (11 through 14),
Ampelos-TEA (5 and 21), and UNIMI-ASSAM
