2015 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo

The importance of terroir is driven home once again by Tiberio’s latest wine, a new Montepulciano d’Abruzzo called Colle Vota (colle means hill and contrada La Vota is the name of the area where the Tiberio estate is located). Back in 2012 (an extremely rainy year), Cristiana Tiberio found that only a small parcel of her Montepulciano vines managed to make a wine good enough for her to bottle. Not only, but the wine was remarkably different than any Montepulciano d’Abruzzo the estate had ever made before (far more refined and silky). The next year, the Tiberio family decided to set the grapes from that specific parcel aside and vinify them separately to see if they might be able to produce a single vineyard Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. While in 2013 not much of a difference between the various Montepulciano wine lots was found, in 2014 (another very rainy year), those vines again outperformed all other vineyards on their property. And so the family decided to bottle that Montepulciano separately as a new wine. The specific parcel of vines is roughly 17 year old, and despite that young vine age, the Colle Vota wine is a remarkable, outstanding expression of a specific Montepulciano biotype (the grape bunches and berries of the Montepulciano in the Colle Vota holding are smaller and the berry skins much thicker) and of a site (Cannubi-like, it appears the wine is especially good in cooler, rainier years).