The Neighbours
Abruzzo runs from the Adriatic to 2,900m in under fifty kilometres. Sea breeze on one side, snowmelt off the Gran Sasso and Maiella on the other; vineyards from near sea level to 600m and above.
Emidio Pepe
Every bottle Emidio Pepe sells that is more than twenty years old gets opened by hand first.
Cirelli
When Francesco Cirelli decided how his wines should be made, he skipped steel tanks and oak barrels altogether and commissioned terracotta amphorae instead, made by a family of potters in Impruneta, Tuscany, working in a tradition that has shaped wine vessels since the Renaissance.
Torre dei Beati
At Torre dei Beati, the rosé isn't a wine you drink before the meal starts. Rosa-ae, their Cerasuolo, Abruzzo's traditional, deep-coloured style of rosé, is structured enough to carry a full meal and made to age for years, the way a medium-bodied red would.
De Fermo
When Stefano Papetti Ceroni and Eloisa De Fermo gave up law and moved to her family's land in the hills above Loreto Aprutino, one of the first things they found was a cellar.
Vaddinelli
When Felice Prosperi decided to turn two ground-floor rooms of his own house into a wine cellar, his mother, his sister, and his brother-in-law all told him not to.
Amorotti
Beneath the Carboni family's palazzo in the centre of Loreto Aprutino sits a cellar that has been used for making wine since at least the 1600s, carved into the tufa and limestone bedrock under the hilltop town.
Valle Reale
Valle Reale's cellar runs on three refusals: no wood, no temperature control, no filtration.
Tenuta Cerulli Spinozzi
The cellar behind Cerulli Spinozzi's best wines was built in 2003 by two brothers who had spent their careers doing almost nothing wine-related.
Photography on this page is placeholder — estate shots from Contrada Cona standing in until each producer supplies their own.