Every now and then I’m willing to spend €20 or a bottle of wine in Abruzzo. That’s 750 ml for €20! “Sure you could easily get 10 litres of wine for €20 in Abruzzo, what are you playing at”, I hear you exclaim.
You’re right. I don’t do it often but I make no apology for it. I do like the vino della casa and find Abruzzo has no shortage of great tasting and very drinkable wine for little more than €1 a bottle. But sometimes you just want to splash out.
It might be because wine is so much more expensive in Ireland as shipping costs, marketing costs, the wholesale cut, the retail cut, excise duty and VAT can turn a €1 bottle of wine into €7 in less time than it takes you say in vino veritas.
If Ireland had a wine industry things would be different. But it doesn’t and although I think it is a fantastic country, I do grumble a little when I spend €14 on a Tralcetto Montepulciano d’Abruzzo from Zaccagnini that I can get for less than €7 in supermarket in Pescara.
But somehow my mindset flips when I’m in Abruzzo. I’ll find reasons to spend more on wine than I would in Dublin. It might be because I feel that most of what I spend actually goes to the production of the wine and not to middle-men or government coffers. Whatever the reason three times during my last visit to Abruzzo I had a special bottle of wine. Twice it was in a restaurant and once it was at dinner in a friend’s house. The wines were from different cantine, and were all very good, so I’ve listed them below in case you come across them and want to try them.
They ranged in price from €16 to €22, but I bet they can be got for less than that if you look around as two of them were bought in restaurants.
The first was a Don Bosco Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.
I’d been to the Azienda Vinicola Bosco Nestore & C. s.n.c. in Nocciano (PE) back in 2008, when I visited it as part of the Cantine Aperte weekend. On that occasion I helped myself to a couple of generous glasses from their Pan range. My nephew, who prefers beer to wine, brought a bottle home to his parents and they loved it. Mega brownie points were awarded.
But this time we were enjoying lunch in La Bilancia, a restaurant and hotel just outside Loreto Aprutino, and we felt the boat needed to be pushed out a bit further than normal; we had a bottle of the Don Bosco (approx. €20 in the restaurant).
It was wonderful, full of flavour and well structured. The official tasting notes say it has the following characteristics:
- Colour: dark ruby red with light orange nuances.
- Bouquet: intense smells of ripened red fruit and secondary spicy smells.
- Taste: full and soft, rightly tannic, fruity and spicy in mouth.
I think it was my favourite of the three wines I tried. It just seemed to be perfectly balanced and worked well with the Abruzzo lamb we ordered. That afternoon it was as if all the key ingredients, the restaurant, the food, the company and of course the wine, matched our mood perfectly.
Another excellent wine I had was the Contesa Montepulciano d’Abruzzo from the Contesa winery in Collecorvino (PE). We had this wine in a restaurant called Florano overlooking Loreto Aprutino. It wasn’t as expensive as the Don Bosco, about €16 in the restaurant and although it was very good, it didn’t quite have the same impact.
Here are the official tasting notes from the Contesa website
- Tasting: Deep ruby red colour with grenadine tints, very limpid and full-bodied. At the olfactory evaluation it appears intense, persistent, of fine quality. It has a fragrance of ripe red fruits especially of wood and jam fruits, with tones of toast cocoa and chocolate. The taste is full, round, warm, just tannic. The wine is well structured and mature.
- Food link: The wine links well with first succulent dishes succulent, with roast meat, grilled meat, and also with cheese and processed pork meat. This Montepulciano could be appreciated within 3 or more years. Serving temperature: 16/18°C
The restaurant Florano deserves a post on its own as the quality of the food is always excellent and the view of the old town of Loreto Aprutino below is beautiful. It really is a romantic spot for a special meal after sunset and as it was our anniversary we could think of no place we’d rather be.
It’s actually one of the few places I know where you can get Valentini wine. On one very, very special occasion 2 years ago we had a bottle of the Valentini Trebbiano and afterwards we were in no doubt that it was worth every cent. If you read around you pretty soon get the feeling that no other Trebbiano comes close to the quality of Valentini. The driving force of this Azienda was Eduardo Valentini and it is now guided by the hand of his son Francesco.
Here are three articles I read recently that sing the praises of Valentini:
- The Lord of the Vines By Ed McCarthy Jun 22, 2010 from Wine Review Online
- The Secretive Man Behind Italy’s Best Wine by John Mariani January 26 2010 from Bloomberg
- The Epicurean Traveler in Abruzzo part of Italy’s Adriatic Wine Road by Scott W Clemens
The third wine was from Valle Reale. I’d read that their wines were excellent so on previous visits to Abruzzo I’d looked out for them in various wine shops, but no shop I tried had any in stock. They’re based in Popoli (PE) and I thought that I might drop by as I passed on my way to or from Rome. But that didn’t work out.
But while I was in Pineto (TE) for stage 12 of the Giro d’Italia and I spotted a wine shop called Atre e Sapori d’Abruzzo at Via G. D’annunzio 64. I was delighted to discover they had one bottle of Valle Reale left. It was a riserva and it cost about €20. Taking into account the usual restaurant mark up this wine was probably the most expensive of the three.
Four of us sat down to enjoy the wine a few days later after it had been brought to its optimum temperature, decanted and left to breath for a few hours. I wouldn’t normally go to all this trouble but I was in the company of a friend who believes it is rare to get a really good bottle of wine from Abruzzo. Well it may be rare but we found another one that evening in the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo from Valle Reale. Structure, a nice edge and a bucket load of cherries – it all came together very nicely.
At this point you might think I know something about wine.
Well guess again, this is where I prove I’m just an amateur wine critic and a dedicated wine drinker – I don’t have a note of the name of the bottle, I can’t even remember its year, I just know it was from Valle Reale!
Sorry about that. But all is not lost. It was a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t from their San Calisto range. I searched on their website but I wan’t able to find a label I recognised from their lists.
I guess I’ll just have to do more research. Hey-ho!
Related posts:
- You like red wine, it’s official! As with all bloggers I like my posts to be...
- Cantine Aperte 2009 – Wine Producers Open Their Doors On 30th and 31st May 2009 (Saturday and Sunday) many...
- A wine pilgrimage of sorts to Bolognano (PE) I was best man at the wedding of two very...
