2017 Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Riserva Ilico

The Illuminati winery oversees 130 hectares of vines within the Controguerra DOC and Colline Teramane Montepulciano d’Abruzzo DOCGs, located between the Gran Sasso mountain and the Adriatic Sea. The Illuminati family boasts over 130 years of farming and winemaking experience, yet it was the forward thinking and innovative Dino Illuminati that they can thank for much of their success today. Few wine lovers outside of the region had heard of Abruzzo when he took the reins of his family’s winery and holdings in the 1950s. Illuminati set forth to better define and understand the families holdings, while modernizing their practices in the vineyards and winery. It’s because of this that many of the first single-vineyard expressions of the region emerged, which continue to be benchmarks for quality to this very day. While there is some use of barrique through the prestige-level wines at this estate, it’s implemented quite well, and the majority of the production follows traditional maturation in Slavonian oak botti. These are fruit-focused, well-made wines of terroir, with production sizes that make them easy enough to find, but without losing their regional character.