2016 Il Feuduccio Montepulciano D’Abruzzo Feuduccio

Some six hours from Milan is one of the most beautiful, untouched landscapes you could imagine: green valleys and snow-capped mountains, with the Adriatic Sea for horizon. Here is the estate of Abruzzi-born Gaetano Lamaletto. Forty years ago and freshly married to Maria, he left his native land, staking everything he had on a South American ceramics venture that was to bear golden fruits. It would have been only natural for the Lamalettos to enjoy their hard-earned success and give Abruzzi no more than the fleeting tribute of nostalgia.Instead, Gaetano chose to craft a range of all-Abruzzi wines in celebration of his homeland. In 1996, he secured 67 acres of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo (now expanded to 99 acres) and one of Italy’s greatest oenologists: Franco Bernabei. The entire estate, now totalling 129 acres that comprise superb olive groves, is 100% organically cultivated.

All phases of the preparatory work have been supervised not only by Bernabei and Gaetano, but by the latter’s eldest daughter, Laura, and manager Rocco Cipollone.

The sandy-clayey-silty terrain – catered to by ideal microclimate, ideal temperature range, ideal varieties, ideally trained and drained – is, in Bernabei’s words, baciato da Dio,”kissed by God”. In 2004, the range was expanded to two white blends (Yare now being flanked by Il Feuduccio Bianco) and four native Montepulciano d’Abruzzos.