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06 MAY 2015
n.d.p. in abruzzo: 50 years of emidio pepe
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n.d.p. in abruzzo:
50 years of
emidio pepe
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So much has been written about Abruzzese winemaker Emidio Pepe's majestic
montepulciani and the ethereal delicacy of his equally ageless trebbiani that I
despair of the possibility of saying anything new. The wines are landmarks for
the region, towering above everything else like the gnarled Apennine peaks
through which one passes on the long car ride from Rome Fiumicino to Torano
Nuovo.
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75002 (22)
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Rather than exhaust a reader with tasting notes of the dozens of vintages we
sampled, I thought I'd just relay my own experiences with the estate's wines, in
the hopes that by doing so I'll communicate something about their unique place
within the pantheons of Italian wine, Abruzzese wine, and, nowadays, natural
wine.
60's american pop
(1)
75001 (29)
► March (4)
► 2014 (56)
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70's singersongwriters (3)
► April (3)
Still, it remains for me to thank the Pepe family for inviting me to the latter town
last November for the estate's 50th anniversary celebrations.
40's blues (1)
70's proto-punk (2)
revolutionaries: bar
à vin a.t &
restaurant a.t, 7...
That last term never came up in Los Angeles in 2006 or 2007 when I first tasted
the wines, while working as wine director for a restaurant called Pizzera Mozza.
Emidio's daughter Sofia Pepe was visiting accounts with their importer's rep, a
man who possessed the uncanny ability to make himself heard above even the
Entra
75003 (7)
loudest restaurant din.
75004 (7)
75005 (10)
75006 (7)
75008 (6)
75009 (18)
75010 (24)
75011 (61)
I was 22, running a baby Italian list with a price cap of $50 retail. I had never
tasting anything like the Pepe wines. I still remember the ghostly apricot fruit
and marine notes of a '79 Trebbiano that evening... Sofia's English was limited
and my Italian non-existent, but I tried to relay my enthusiasm as best I could.
Later, working as a sommelier at Osteria Mozza, I sold the wines now and then,
principally the reds, though they tended to be overshadowed, on that list as on
many others, by pages upon pages of Barolo, Barbaresco, and Brunello.
75012 (12)
75013 (5)
75014 (5)
75015 (3)
75017 (5)
75018 (10)
75019 (12)
75020 (7)
80's australian indie
rock (1)
80's british blueeyed soul (1)
80's college rock
(1)
80's dream pop (1)
80's experimental
singer-songwriter
pop (1)
The Usti vineyard below the house. Many of Pepe's vineyards are named after members of his
family; this one bears his own nickname.
80's hair metal (1)
80's indie rock (1)
80's jangle-pop (1)
80's new wave (1)
80's pop (7)
80's power pop (1)
80's twee pop (1)
Consumer perceptions of the montepulciano grape (let alone trebbiano, which
remains largely unknown) are too often shaped by its cheapest iterations, which
are often gently tannic, blackfruited, lightly rubbery glass-pour wines. The grape
punches above its weight in the Marche appellations of Rosso Conero and Rosso
Piceno, but it achieves outright grandeur in Abruzzo, and there chiefly in the
wines of Emidio Pepe and Eduardo Valentini.
80's world-pop (1)
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90's comedy films
(1)
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rock (1)
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(3)
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90's post-trip-hop
female vocal pop
(1)
90's rock-pop (1)
90's shoe-gazer
rock (1)
90's southern hiphop (1)
90's synth-pop (1)
90's west coast hip
hop (1)
abouriou (1)
abruzzo (2)
Some tanks containing pecorino, which Pepe began to produce only recently.
While the two men considered one another peers, it's interesting to note that their
approaches to winemaking share only the most general features - region and
grape variety and a certain non-interventionist ethos. Where Valentini employed
Slavonian oak botti, Pepe uses glass-lined concrete, famously considering oakaging an abomination. Valentini took only the greatest grapes from
comparatively vast vineyard holdings (70ha) for the creation of the wines
bearing his name, selling the rest to the local cooperativo. Pepe, by contrast,
holds 16ha, much of which he planted himself, and, except in disastrous
vintages, bottles everything. Valentini was an ex-lawyer who returned to
agriculture, while Pepe was born a farmer and pretty much stayed one.
accommodation (2)
actors (1)
admissions of
relative ignorance
(6)
alarming plate
presentation (6)
Eduardo Valentini died in 2006, and since then his estate has been run by his son
Francesco Paolo Valentini. Pepe, for his part, is 82, and although by all accounts
he remains present for every aspect of viticulture and vinification, he already has
his chosen successors, in his daughter Sofia and granddaughter Chiara. Sofia
handles winemaking, while young Chiara somehow manages to balance her
pursuit of an economics degree with the task of running the estate's considerable
albariño (1)
export markets.
alien abductions (1)
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Alsace (13)
altesse (1)
amazing
discoveries (1)
american cuisine
(1)
americans are so
friendly (1)
amphorae (1)
amusing wine
labels (1)
anarchists (1)
ancient beverages
(1)
angevin clan (3)
Sofia and Chiara conducting a vertical trebbiano tasting.
animals (1)
anti-capitalist
screeds (1)
aperitifs (2)
appassimento (2)
aramon (1)
arbanne (1)
ardèche (3)
argentine cuisine
(1)
armagnac (2)
I was amused to read, in an entertainingly hagiographic book on Emidio Pepe
entitled "Manteniamoci Giovani" organised* by Italian wine journalist Sandro
Sangiorgi, that Pepe was for many years frustrated by his lack of a male heir. He
ought not to have worried, for both Sofia Pepe and Chiara De Iulis Pepe seem to
have inherited his almost visionary capacities of foresight. Whatever compelled
Emidio Pepe to begin holding his wine in reserve before release - foreseeing the
market value of demonstrating the ageworthiness of his then-underrated
Abruzzese wines - presumably also compelled Sofia, as late as 2005, to take an
interest in biodynamic winemaking, which she says was, in some sense, a
formalized system of what her father had been doing all along.
arneis (1)
articles elsewhere
(1)
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list (5)
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wordplay (1)
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anecdotes (1)
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(1)
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(1)
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beauty queens (2)
beer (13)
beer gripes (2)
bees (1)
beets (1)
biancolello (1)
Pepe's first vintages bore the nome di fantasia "Aurora," along with the cartoon image of a comely
Danish girl he'd met in 1960.
Emidio Pepe, who never studied oenology, apparently learned on his own to
follow the lunar cycle for vineyard treatments and cellar practices. He has never
employed select yeasts. Vineyards are treated only with copper sulfate, plus
(since the mid-2000's) biodynamic preparations 501 and 500. I'm told that Pepe
has always eschewed sulfur use during vinification, which takes place in glasslined cement; nor is sulfur employed at bottling, which, chez Pepe, is a
particularly complex, multi-tiered affair.
Both montepulciano and trebbiano are held in reserve until the family deems
them ready for release, a hugely laudable practice. The first twist comes in the
fact that the individual small glass-lined concrete tanks in which the Pepe wines
age are never assembled before bottling, which allows for some individual
personality among the lots.
bierza (1)
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biodynamic
discussion (2)
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delicacies (1)
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blind tests (1)
blinded by kawaii
(1)
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blogophobia (2)
bloody marys (1)
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bonarda (1)
The trebbiano, rather fascinatingly, is bottle-aged standing up.
bordeaux (11)
boredom (1)
bosco (1)
botrytis (2)
boulangeries (1)
Furthermore, in most vintages, the lots are divided into reserva wines, which will
spend many more years aging in bottle in the domaine's cellars, and non-reserva,
which see earlier release - and nothing on the wine labels denotes whether a
bottle is riserva or non-riserva.
bourbon (1)
bourgeuil (1)
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breakfast (3)
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(2)
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(5)
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(1)
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chablis (16)
champagne (21)
chance encounters
(1)
changes for the
better (2)
changes for the
worse (1)
chaptalisation (1)
chardonnay (76)
Since typically the riserva amounts to about 50% of production in a given year,
and since older riserva bottles released later command higher wholesale prices,
there remains significant room for confusion for retailers and consumers.
Additionally, the family (chiefly Emidio's wife Rosa) decants each bottle of
montepulciano by hand before release, a laborious and idiosyncratic practice that
the domaine says is to remove sediment and aerate the wine before its debut in
the market. This has the side effect of obliging the drinker of a Pepe wine to, in
effect, keep three dates in mind, as with vintage Champagne: the vintage, the
date of decanting (which in Pepe's case is printed on the corks), and the date one
is actually consuming it.
Altogether, these practices create more than 'room for confusion' - they comprise
a remarkably engineered castella of confusion, a Calvino-esque edifice of
unknowability that I can't help but appreciate. As wine lovers, we have the
pedantic tendency to try to master the wines we love by attempting to note and
commit to memory every minute detail of their production cycle. As with
romantic love, this aesthetic love typically fixates on whatever frustrates it most.
So I can only applaud the genius of this simple Abruzzese farmer whose bottling
practice utterly shuts the door on complete understanding, who proposes, with
such inspired dis-ingenuity, his simple montepulciano and trebbiano wines...
chardonnay rose (1)
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chasselas (3)
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chenin (34)
chenin blanc (4)
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chinese food (4)
cider (2)
ciliegiolo (1)
cinsault (4)
clairette (2)
class observations
(1)
classic cinema (2)
It was only after learning details of Emidio Pepe's opaque bottling system that I
retroactively understood the amusing remark of a well-known Roman wine
merchant, who when I once professed my appreciation for Pepe's wines, shook
his head and said, with no further elaboration, "Yes, but he's a real fucker!"
claustrophobia (1)
clones (1)
clubs (1)
cocktails (13)
coffee (2)
cognac (2)
Whatever one's feelings about Pepe's bottling system, his other practices,
combined with his successors' market savvy, have ensured that Azienda Agricola
Emidio Pepe is among the first truly great Italian estates - alongside that of
Elisabetta Foradori - to find its footing in an international market increasingly
reorganised by the aesthetics of natural wine.
colombard (1)
colorino (1)
columbard (1)
comedy (1)
comic book
characters (2)
communist cafes
(1)
concern for
humanity (1)
concert-going (4)
condrieu (1)
conflicts of interest
(4)
contemporary art
(6)
contemporary life
(1)
The company was almost as good as the wines. Here with wine-journo friends Bertrand Celce, of
Wine Terroirs, and Alice Feiring.
contests (2)
contortionist
cuisine (1)
contradicting
myself (1)
cooking (3)
cooperatives (1)
copious vegetarian
options (4)
corsica (3)
cortese (4)
corvina (1)
cosy darling
restaurants (2)
courbu (1)
croatians (1)
croatina (1)
crudo (1)
crêpes (1)
cult film (2)
cult television (8)
cultural differences
(1)
cynical money pits
It was in this context that I re-encountered Sofia and met Chiara for the first
time, at biodynamic wine tasting held in Paris in 2012 at A La Marguerite.
During intervening trips to Italy, I'd fallen in love with the domaine's Cerasuolo
d'Abruzzo, a delectably svelte and Pinot-like rosato that the Pepes stubbornly
refuse to sell on the export market. So at A La Marguerite that day I gently
ribbed the Pepes about the wine's unavailability. (The ostensible reason is that is
doesn't have the aging potential of the trebbiano or the montepulciano; the
family prefers to keep its export market fully concentrated on its noblest wines.)
(1)
césar (1)
côte roannaise (3)
côtes du
marmandais (1)
côtes du rousillon
(2)
dafni (1)
damning screeds
(3)
day trips (2)
DC comics (3)
deadly font use (1)
death by mayo (1)
deeply flawed ideas
(2)
definitions of
america (2)
department store
wine (1)
design catastrophes
(7)
desserts (5)
dinner parties (4)
disco (1)
disturbing
restaurant artwork
(1)
But that fact is I'd been surprised to see any of the legendary Pepe wines at a tiny
Paris natural wine tasting. Even more surprising was how well the wines all
showed, in an entirely new context. After a few years tasting natural wine in
Paris, I'd long since come to find many of my former favorite Italian wines a bit
polished and overwrought. The Pepe wines, however, were as sonorous, soulful,
and expressive as ever. Chiara and I kept in touch after that tasting, and we still
try to find time to hang when she passes through Paris, or when our paths cross
at tastings in the Loire. Another trait Chiara will no doubt credit to her
grandfather is her voracious curiosity for other wines and other cultures; in the
brief time I've known her, she's made impressive progress internalizing the
French language and wine culture.
do not contact me
about this (1)
dolcetto (4)
dominican republic
(1)
don't kill me (1)
dordogne (1)
dostoevsky (1)
dr. evil (1)
drinking far too
much in one day
(2)
drinking things too
young (1)
durella (1)
easy targets (1)
eating my words
(1)
eating standing up
(1)
eggs (3)
Chiara Pepe (right) with Thomas Deck of Deck & Donahue brewery (left) and chef Rodolphe Paquin
of Le Repaire de Cartouche (middle). Chiara even managed to make sense of Rodolphe's Normand
accent.
encouragement (1)
english literature
(1)
enormous selection
(2)
enough with the
obsession with
aging things (1)
erbaluce (1)
eternal life (1)
ethical issues (1)
eulogies (1)
everyone spitting
on each other (1)
excuses (7)
expat self-hate (3)
faded glory (1)
fakers (6)
falanghina (1)
family (2)
farms (1)
I'm curious to see how the Pepe wines are received in Paris, in the context of a
vanishingly small market for non-French wines. On the one hand, the limited
scope of serious Montepulciano d'Abruzzo available in the world should make it
all the easier for drinkers to get a handle on the grape and the region. But Pepe's
importers, Oenotropie, take a slightly ambitious margin on their selections,
making the wines even more of a luxury than they naturally are.** So cult Italian
wines like Pepe's tend, in Paris, to wind up as the sort of thing restaurant
industry people sell to each other on their nights off.
fashion (15)
fashion anxiety (1)
fatal feng shui (1)
faux pas (1)
fendant (1)
fer servadou (1)
fiano (2)
fishing for
investors (1)
fitou (1)
flea markets (1)
florence (1)
florid old booze ads
(1)
foie gras (1)
folle blanche (1)
food writers (2)
forgivable
hyperbole (1)
frappato (2)
free food (2)
freisa (1)
french history (1)
french literature (2)
french television
(1)
With a bottle of Patrick Bouju's lovely Auvergnat chardonnay at Bones.
It's a shame, because if any wines benefit from frequent comparative tasting,
Pepe's do. The main event of our visit to the domaine in November was a grand
tasting of a wide selection of montepulciani from 1964 - Pepe's first vintage - to
the present releases.
french translations
(1)
frenchy versions of
non-french dishes
(5)
frightful graphic
design (4)
friulano (1)
funny fruit (1)
furmint (1)
gaillac (1)
gamay (53)
garganega (2)
gavi (2)
general aesthetics
(3)
georgian cuisine (1)
german wine (2)
gewürztraminer (2)
ghosts (1)
It should testify to the quality of the rest of the tasting if I mention only that the
1964 was still showing baroque complexity, with wide-screen, liquereux,
cinnamon flecked aromas, and a Thanksgiving-like palate that included
everything from cranberry to raspberry confit to wild game.
giving the
appearance of
being a desperate
alcoholic drifter (1)
gizmos (1)
gloating (2)
glop (1)
glorious spritzy
thoughtless wines
(1)
gluttony (1)
goat meat (1)
godello (1)
good design (6)
good intentions (1)
good works (1)
gotta eat (1)
graffiti (1)
graphs (2)
grappa (1)
greco (1)
greek wine (4)
In today's post-natural wine conversation - at least in Paris - one often
encounters tasters who react to unfamiliar wines by defensively doubting how
"natural" they really are, as if the quality of a wine could be judged by its
greeks (2)
greghetto (1)
grenache (13)
grenache blanc (2)
grenache gris (4)
grievously awful
service (10)
resemblance to, say, Pierre Beauger's monster Auvergat gamays or one of JeanPierre Robinot's oxidised Anjou chenins. At its worst, this results in a culture
that treats garish flaws as signs of authenticity. Whereas this tasting of half a
century of Pepe montepulciano served as a reminder that the true test of a wine's
purity ought to be how faithfully the wine reflects its vintage and terroir - the
sort of picture that can only emerge through an examination of multiple
vintages.***
grignolino (3)
gringet (2)
grolleau (6)
gros manseng (1)
grüner veltliner (1)
guildford (1)
hangover
adventures (2)
hangover cuisine
(3)
harvest (2)
helicopters (1)
heroic mustaches
(1)
hidden restaurants
(3)
historical
significance (1)
holidays (1)
hollow hype (2)
hondarabi zuri (1)
horrible accidents
(1)
horror films (1)
The tasting's only minor drawback was its format. Each wine was accompanied
by well-intentioned but heavy-handed narration from Sandro Sangiorgi onstage,
whose talents as a wine writer could not overcome that fact that everyone
gathered would have much rather heard from Pepe himself, who sat silent, natty,
and gnomic onstage, or from anyone in the family. Or, better yet, the audience
might have been allotted twenty minutes of silence alone with the wines, which
expressed themselves rather well...
hotels (1)
how to pick up
chicks in the
countryside (1)
how to survive a
monday night (1)
humagne rouge (1)
hungarian wine (1)
i can argue forever
(2)
i'll get over it (1)
idleness (1)
illegal wine (1)
illustrators (1)
imaginary
disagreements (1)
importers (1)
income
stratification (1)
industry blather (1)
innovative cakes
(1)
innovators (1)
insane spaces (2)
instant classics (1)
inter-governmental
organizations (1)
inventing machines
to do what can be
done by hand very
simply (1)
irish cuisine (1)
irouleguy (1)
italian cuisine (5)
italian wine (57)
italy (34)
jacquère (3)
japan (4)
Another pleasure of this trip was the company of Levi Dalton, of whose mastery of, and eloquence
on, Italian wine I remain in awe.
As it was, tasting these masterpieces with Sandro droning on was kind of like
trying to make love to a beautiful woman, while an announcer you have never
met stands by the bedside providing input via megaphone.
japanese food (6)
john malkovich
lookalikes (1)
jura (28)
kafka (1)
keanu reeves (1)
kicking hornets'
nests (1)
killer real estate (1)
knitting gangs (1)
lacrima (1)
landscape features
(1)
languedoc (6)
lateness (1)
learning on the job
(1)
lebanese food (1)
lengthy
disquisitions on the
nuances of offvintages (2)
lists (2)
Anyway, as you might imagine, none of us stormed out in protest or anything.
The tasting was followed by a rollicking party that included a mobile pizza oven,
a jazz band, a rapping marching band, dancing, and infinite bottles of
montepulciano, cerasuolo, and trebbiano. That was how I learned that Steve
Wildy, wine director of the Vetri group in Philadelphia, and Alice Feiring are
both better dancers than me.
literary fiction (3)
literary references
(9)
lobster (2)
loire (63)
lombardia (1)
london (13)
loneliness (1)
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lost evenings (1)
love for loser
grapes (3)
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(1)
lunch (10)
luxury cruise lines
(1)
macabeo / viura (6)
making myself
unpopular (3)
malbec (1)
malvasia (2)
The Pepe family.
By now, the kindness and enthusiasm of the succeeding generations of Pepe's
family are almost as renowned as the wines themselves, such that I fear even my
most heartfelt thanks will have a slightly redundant ring. But here goes: the
Abruzzo region, and wine lovers worldwide, are incredibly fortunate that Pepe's
wines have such talented ambassadors, whose palpable reverence for their
product is commensurate with the achievement of its creation.
many many
magnums (5)
marcillac (1)
marketing
conundrums (3)
marsanne (4)
marx brothers (1)
mass media (2)
mauzac (2)
meat city (5)
melon de
bourgogne (4)
mencia (1)
menu pineau (3)
merlot (7)
metacommentary
(4)
mexican wine (1)
michael jackson
references (1)
* It would be a stretch to say "authored" in this scenario. Sangiorgio seems to have farmed
michelin-starred
restaurants (2)
most of the work out to interns.
minutolo (1)
** Later I was intrigued to learn that Pepe's wines have always been priced among the top
mockery (1)
tier of Italian winemaking, a decision seemingly taken through a combination of far-sighted
molecular
gastronomy (1)
marketing, simple necessity, and, at least in the beginning, insane hubris.
molinara (1)
*** I'm hard pressed to think of French natural wine domaines who make a habit of holding
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reserves of wine and releasing numerous older vintages. Jean-Claude Chanudet of Domaine
montepulciano (2)
Chamonard springs to mind, although on a more modest scale.
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Related Links:
Bertrand Celce's considerably more timely and informative post on our visit
to Emidio Pepe.
Levi Dalton's splendid 2014 podcast with Chiara Pepe at I'll Drink To That.
A 2009 post about Emidio Pepe at Avinnare that I stopped reading around the
point where the author expressed outright surprise that organic wines could age.
Posted by aaron ayscough at 3:10 PM
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