Abruzzo wine region

The Abruzzo region in central Italy

Abruzzo (historically pl.: Abruzzi) is an Italian wine region located in the mountainous central Italian region of Abruzzo, along the Adriatic Sea. It is bordered by the Molise wine region to the south, Marche to the north and Lazio to the west. Abruzzo's rugged terrain, 65% of which is mountainous, help to isolate the region from the winemaking influence of the ancient Romans and Etruscans in Tuscany, but the area has had a long history of wine production.[1][2]

Today more than 22 million cases of wine are produced annually in Abruzzo, making it the seventh most productive region in Italy, but only 21.5% of which is made under the denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) designation.[3][4][5] More than two-thirds of the region's wine is produced by co-operatives or sold in bulk to negociants in other Italian wine regions in Tuscany, Piedmont and the Veneto for blending.[1][2] The most notable wine of the region is Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, produced with the Montepulciano grape, that is distinct from the Sangiovese grape behind the Tuscan wine Vino Nobile di Montepulciano.[6] Together with Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo is one of the most widely exported DOC wine from Italy, particularly to the United States.[4]

While wine is produced in all four of Abruzzo's provinces, the bulk of the production takes place in the province of Chieti, which is the fifth largest producing province in all of Italy. Some of the most highly rated wine from Abruzzo comes from the hillside vineyards in the northern provinces of Pescara and Teramo. In the completely mountainous province of L'Aquila in the west, some rosé wine known as Cerasuolo from the Montepulciano grape is produced.[1]

  1. ^ a b c M. Ewing-Mulligan & E. McCarthy Italian Wines for Dummies pg 188-191 Hungry Minds 2001. ISBN 0-7645-5355-0.
  2. ^ a b J. Robinson (ed) The Oxford Companion to Wine Third Edition pgs 1 & 366-368 Oxford University Press 2006. ISBN 0-19-860990-6.
  3. ^ Robinson, Jancis (2015). Oxford Companion to Wine (Fourth ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-19-870538-3.
  4. ^ a b J. Bastianich & D. Lynch Vino Italiano pg 275-285 Crown Publishing 2005. ISBN 1-4000-9774-6.
  5. ^ T. Stevenson, ed. The Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia (5th Edition) pgs 343-346 Dorling Kindersley (2011). ISBN 9780756686840.
  6. ^ Matt Kramer Making Sense of Italian Wine pgs 162-168 Running Press Books 2006. ISBN 0762422300.