A Great Montepulciano

My first experience with Montepulciano was a bad one and thus, like many others who stick to the old adage “first impressions last”, I have not gone anywhere near the grape or it’s wine for a long while now. My bad experience was in Pizza Express in London, somewhere near Oxford Street and it put me off Montepulciano for a long time….until now!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of lunch in the newly opened Italian restaurant “Giando” in Fleet Arcade (the first stop for the US Navy when they hit dry land) and, wine aside, the restaurant itself is very good with great service and some excellent food. However, I am not a food writer and shall leave that to other fellow professionals!

During lunch, myself and present company had a few bottles of Italian wine from Abruzzo producer Nicodemi. Fattoria Nicodemi is situated in the Teramo district of Abruzzo, a hilly region that borders the Adriatic Sea in central Italy. It was founded by Bruno Nicodemi, and today is run by Alessandro and Elena Nicodemi. The grapes are all hand harvested and now, in its second generation, there is a real passion for making great wines with a focus on showing off the fruit.

The estate's wines can be divided into three distinct groups with their Montepulciano d'Abruzzo and Trebbiano d'Abruzzo wines representing fruit-forward, single-varietal wines that are rich in flavor, exceptionally easy drinking and show great value for money. They are wines that, for the Trebbiano, are fresh, clean and crisp, a perfect wine for weekend and summertime drinking and one that, with its crisp acidity went excellently with the buffalo mozzarella and tomato salad.

The Montepulciano was the complete opposite of what I was expecting. It was lively and fruit forward, very easy drinking and exactly what I would expect from a wine like this that is most definitely supposed to be served by the glass in Italian restaurants. It does not necessarily need food as it has minimal tannin and acidity making it a nice drink alone wine.

The Notàri wine label is a level higher and uses a selection of superior fruit that is then aged in a combination of tank and barrel then bottled separately. We tasted the Notari Trebbiano DOC Superior 2011 which is bigger and richer in style, a little more refined and with good weight and an excellent food wine – it goes very nicely with roast Chicken.  The Notàri Montepulciano is fantastic and goes extremely well with pizza, something I usually associate Montepulciano with. The blend of flavours of the basil and mozzarella really paired well with the wine and, much like the white is very approachable and easy drinking.

Neromoro is the estate's top wine, made only in the very best years and, I have to say it (the 2008 vintage that we were drinking) blew me away! The vineyard, planted by Bruno Nicodemi, uses vines that are more than 40 years old, the oldest clones of Montepulciano and the subsequent wine is aged 100 per cent in new oak barrels. It is a wine that can age tremendously but one that tastes so good that you will struggle to keep it in your cellar! It has beautiful fruit flavours and is a great food wine – we had it with roast chicken and lamb and the pairing with the lamb was really exceptionally good. There are so few bottles of this wine made that the allocation to Hong Kong is just 80 bottles – I guess there are only 79 left now then! It’s a smooth, gorgeous wine and one I can highly recommend to anyone.

There is an amazing focus on quality from top to bottom from Fattoria Nicodemi with an obvious attention to detail not just in the top end wines but throughout the whole spectrum. I am really very happy to have had the chance to drink these wines over lunch yesterday and it has completely reversed my views on Montepulciano – although I am sure there are still some bad ones out there, Fattoria Nicodemi certainly is not making them!

Fattoria Nicodemi is available in Hong Kong from Lexdium Co. Ltd and more information can be found on their website www.lexdium.com.hk or you can contact their sales team on sales2@lexdium.com