Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Emidio Pepe 2002

Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Emidio Pepe 2002, rare old vintage, Iconic natural wine, rich, layered, full and delicious. One of the greats of Italian wine making. Montepulciano d’Abruzzo really can be one of the world’s greatest wines and Emidio Pepe’s are somewhat iconic. They are complex, earthy, yet elegant and fresh. Really outstanding, drink with only with the most finely prepared meat dishes you can produce from your kitchen. For a wine of this depth and ageing potential, it has immense smoothness and is already drinking beautifully, in fact the weight of fruit flavour makes it absolutely gorgeous stuff. With age these wines develop a myriad of complexities and flavours, very profound wine, an experience for sure!

“Chiara, Emidio’s granddaughter, says of the 2002 vintage: It was a cold and rainy year and Montepulciano is not used to cold seasons, which we rarely have. It was quite a difficult vintage to produce because of the fact that Montepulciano starts with high acidity and low extract and therefore in its youth (in bottle) is unbalanced. If you leave them time they will reveal a level of elegance most vintages will not reach. You have clearly high acidity, but a suppleness the warmer years do not have.’

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.