Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
all on its own; this wine is made with organic
grapes, is fresh and uncomplicated, with sim-
ple but bright white fl ower and green apple aro-
mas and fl avors, a great aperitif or paired with
simple vegetable and fi sh dishes).
1982, and after looking over the vines, he
marked those he liked best with colored tape.
The following February he returned and brought
the select grapevines back to his own estate, set-
ting up the fi rst vineyard of Pecorino mother
plants. Cocci Grifoni's fi rst offi cial Pecorino
wine (which he called simply “Colle Vecchio”)
was made with the 1990 vintage. For ten years
he was the sole producer to commercialize this
wine, but its peculiarities, coupled with its com-
mercial success, induced other producers (in
both Abruzzo and the Marche) to plant the vari-
ety and start bottling their own versions.
Over in Abruzzo, Pecorino always lagged
behind Trebbiano d'Abruzzo in importance. It
was only with a series of award-winning wines
by Cataldi Madonna, a philosophy professor and
passionate winemaker (and the fi rst in Italy to
label a wine as Pecorino), that other producers
took note and began producing their own
Pecorino wines. Everyone credits Cataldi
Madonna, or one of his wines, with pushing
them to try Pecorino themselves. Perhaps the
best compliment of all came from Domenico
Pasetti of the Pasetti estate, who after trying
Cataldi Madonna's fi rst ever pecorino, immedi-
ately thought, “This is my wine,” and decided to
start producing it as well. Pasetti remembers
planting his Pecorino vines in 1996; at that
time the international varieties were all the
rage, and so in order to avoid needless argu-
ments in the family, he lied to his parents, tell-
ing them he was planting Chardonnay. His risk
paid off handsomely: in 2000, he produced only
1,200 bottles, while in 2011 he sold 250,000—
50 percent of the entire Pasetti wine produc-
tion. One may wonder at such an increase in
bottle production in such a short time span, but
the wine has undoubtedly met with huge suc-
cess. Lorenzo Landi, who is the consultant
winemaker at Cataldi Madonna, marvels at the
passion and dedication of Cataldi Madonna,
who “has basically tried to make every wine
possible with the variety, from sparkling to
sweet.”
Different clones of Pecorino exist, as do dif-
ferent biotypes. Available clones include UBA-
Pecorino
where it's found:
Marche, Abruzzo, Lazio,
Tu sc a ny, Umbr i a .
national registry code
number:
184.
color:
white.
No, this is not the sheep cheese: this vari-
ety's curious name refers to sheepherders who
ate the grapes while accompanying their fl ocks
up and down the valleys in search of food. For
this reason, it was once also called Uva delle
Pecore or Uva Pecorina, as well as Pecorina
Arquatanella or Arquatana, in reference to the
Arquata area in the Marche where Pecorino has
always been cultivated.
Pecorino is not just a great grape variety; it
is also one of Italy's biggest wine success stories
of the twenty-fi rst century. Whereas I would
have had trouble writing about monovarietal
pecorino only fi fteen years ago, today there are
more than twenty such wines of variable qual-
ity. If Pecorino has managed such a striking
comeback, the merit goes to Guido Cocci Gri-
foni of the Cocci Grifoni estate in the Marche
and Luigi Cataldi Madonna of the Cataldi
Madonna estate in Abruzzo. These two men set
the stage by example and created a whole new
wine. In fact, Pecorino, while always one of the
more common varieties in the Marche (the
variety was grown in the province of Ancona in
1876), fell by the wayside in the twentieth cen-
tury, replaced by more productive varieties. But
Cocci Grifoni, who was unhappy with local
Trebbiano
s and
Malvasia
s, wanted better. In the
early 1980s he set out to rediscover old native
varieties: having heard of an eighty-year-old
farmer from Aquata del Tronto who owned a
largely abandoned vineyard at about one thou-
sand meters above sea level that was planted
with a forgotten variety called Pecorino, he
went to take a look. Cocci Grifoni met with the
vineyard's owner, a Mr. Cafi ni, in September
