Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Emidio Pepe 2002

Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Emidio Pepe 2002, old vintage of an iconic wine.  The 2002 was a cool vintage.  The wines from this vintage have great acidity which allows both Montepulciano and Trebbiano to generate elegant and age-worthy wines.  The 2002 is now approaching 25 years old and will starting to show those incredibly complex and burgundian like flavours which old Pepe wines can acheive.  A rare and very fine bottle for a prestigious cellar.  Drinking window, now until 2030.

The great wines of Emidio Pepe have become iconic on the international market; older vintages sell for high prices and are highly sort after.

You might say 'rightly so' when you consider the labour of love that has gone into every bottle. The organic grapes are handpicked, sorted and every one pressed by foot, a practice that is very rare nowadays but still produces the softest pressing. The must is then fermented with natural yeast in large cement tanks and aged in cement for 2 years, settling naturally without the addition of sulphur. Emidio Pepe wines are then bottled and sent for ageing in the cellar. They store an incredible 40 vintages in their stunning cellar just outside Torano Nuovo in northern Abruzzo not far from the Marche border. When a bottle is sold, it is lovingly decanted into a fresh bottle by hand (hence there is no need for fining nor filtration), Emidio Pepe wines are all corked by hand and then labelled by hand! Only very rarely is any sulphur used in the production of Pepe wines and yet such is the perfection of natural balance that they age for decades.