2020 Pecorino (Colline Pescaresi)

Watching the Tiberio family grow along with their wines has been a great experience. All the verticals I attended of their Trebbiano, Pecorino and Trebbiano Abruzzese Fonte Canale, were eye-opening experiences that left me with paradigm shifts regarding how these varieties can age. Over the years, Cristiana Tiberio has been experimenting with different parcels and biotypes in her vineyards, which first resulted in the 2014 Colle Vota, and the inaugural release of the 2017 Archivio. Cristiana Tiberio's all-stainless-steel-refined Montepulciano d’Abruzzo seems to just keep getting better. The 2017 Archivio is the first release to see any wood refinement in the winery (30% of the juice is done in barrique). Given the incredibly difficult and warm vintage the result yielded an amazingly harmonious wine. In 2019, surprisingly, Tiberio was able to turn the 40% loss of fruit into one of the most intense and packed-full-of-potential examples of the house Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, with a Colle Vota and Archivio in the works. As for Fonte Canale, it remains one of the best whites being made in Italy today. In a region that is often backward, still enamored with the overuse of wood, pushing ripeness levels of their Pecorino into the tropical zone, and releasing more substandard Trebbiano, Tiberio is like a beacon. They are easily one of the top three producers in the region.