2016 Il Feuduccio Montepulciano D’Abruzzo Feuduccio
2016 Il Feuduccio Montepulciano D’Abruzzo Feuduccio Deep, dense ruby in color, the bouquet is beautifully rich, offering aromas of black cherries and raisins, which meld with notes of licorice, scorched earth and goudron confirmed on a ripe, layered palate of impressive purity.
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.