Vertical Tasting of Valentini's Trebbiano d'Abruzzo Valentini is an almost sacred name among Italian wine lovers, long 

considered to be one of the country's top dozen wine estates on a par 

with Gaja, Giacosa, Quintarelli, Felsina, Fontodi and a handful of 

others.&nbsp; Valentini's reputation rests on the strength of only three 

wines, all of which are at the top of their categories:&nbsp; an amazingly 

ageworthy and refined Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, a Trebbiano d'Abruzzo 

that can showcase a complexity not unlike that of an aged white 

Burgundy, and a peerless Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo, a rosé wine.&nbsp; In fact, the

 estate also makes an outstanding extra-virgin olive oil (from a rare 

local cultivar called Lauretana Dritta di Loreto, or Dritta for short):&nbsp;

 simply put, it's one of the dozen best olive oils made by a wine estate

 in Italy.&nbsp; While Valentini has always been most famous for its 

Montepulciano red, insiders know that the Trebbiano d'Abruzzo is 

probably the estate's most successful wine today (Valentini has not 

released a Montepulciano d'Abruzzo since the 2006 vintage). Remember that Trebbiano d'Abruzzo

 is the wine, but the grape is called trebbiano abruzzese. Valentini 

appears to own an older biotype of trebbiano abruzzese, one that is even

 more prone to disease and less productive than normal and is the 

product of ongoing massale selections.&nbsp; This is just one of the 

many 

secrets to Valentini's high-quality version:&nbsp; at least his 

appears to be the real thing.&nbsp; Over the last two decades, 

because of never-ending ampelographic confusion, nurseries routinely 

supplied wineries looking to plant trebbiano abruzzese with bombino 

bianco from Puglia and pagadebit from Emilia-Romagna instead (producers,

 nurseries and scientists mistakenly believed the three varieties to be 

identical).&nbsp; And a lot of 

the unrelated and much lower-quality trebbiano Toscano (the ugni blanc 

of Cognac fame) was also planted in lieu of trebbiano abruzzese. &nbsp;

 At Valentini wine has been made since the 1600s but in fact the

 estate has been bottling its own wine only since the 1950s, under 

Edoardo Valentini, who gave up a possible law career and produced wine 

from the 1956 vintage until his death in 2006 at age 72.&nbsp; His talented 

son Paolo Francesco has taken over, but he is quick to point out that "I

 do nothing differently today than what my father and I used to do 

together: I remain a wine artisan." While Edoardo was an 

immensely charismatic character and famously secretive about the 

viticultural and winemaking techniques he employed to make his stellar 

wines, Paolo Francesco is easier to talk to.&nbsp; He insists that natural 

and non-interventionist winemaking is key.&nbsp; Only a minuscule portion of 

the grapes are used to make wine (roughly 90% of the fruit is sold off),

 and old-fashioned basket presses, glass-lined concrete vats and aging 

in large, old, neutral Slavonian oak casks are staples.&nbsp; There are casks

 here that date back to 1790, 1814, and 1850.&nbsp; Only natural yeasts are 

used and the wines are bottled unfiltered.&nbsp; Malolactic fermentation 

occurs in the bottle (the bottling is done in the spring 

following the vintage) so carbon dioxide is produced in the bottle, 

which acts as an antioxidant (this technique is an effort to use less 

sulfur dioxide). It also means that you'll often hear the sound of 

escaping gas when you open a bottle. Despite Paolo Francesco's 

desire not to do anything differently, he admits that climate change has

 been a major challenge in recent years.&nbsp; For example, in the 19th 

century, the trebbiano was harvested in mid-October, in the 1980s by 

mid-September, and in the 1990s in early September.&nbsp; Valentini candidly 

admits that he finds the last eight or nine vintages of his Trebbiano 

d'Abruzzo much more fruit-forward than they once were, and he's not 

quite a fan of this change.&nbsp; "But I'm not sure it can be avoided, I 

guess," he admits.&nbsp; "Achieving&nbsp; polyphenolic maturity is a problem.&nbsp; 

Lack of freshness and excessive ripeness are also concerns.&nbsp; And 

increasingly, stuck fermentations pose the problem of higher than usual 

volatile acidity, but they also bring out greater complexity in the 

wines." In the vineyard, dry farming and the pergola abruzzese 

training system--characterized by a paltry 1,200-1,400 vines per hectare

 and short pruning, ideal for hot, dry areas such as this part of 

Abruzzo--are typical.&nbsp; Though the Trebbiano d'Abruzzo is made each year,

 it is not always released 

commercially for sale.&nbsp; For example, the 1989 (an extremely rainy year) 

and the 2006 (a great year, but the malolactic started while the wine 

was

 still on its lees, generating off odors) were not sold. The 

following tasting covers 31 vintages, in what was the largest and most 

complete Valentini Trebbiano d'Abruzzo vertical ever conducted--and an 

event that's unlikely ever to be repeated.&nbsp; The tasting took place 

earlier this year at the Valentini estate in the presence of Francesco 

Paolo, his wife and son, and a few of their friends.&nbsp; The wines tasted 

were all of exceptional high quality and only two bottles were faulty, 

with new bottles opened in their place.

Vertical Tasting of Valentini's Trebbiano d'Abruzzo

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