Tenuta Cerulli Spinozzi

The People

The estate carries two family names because it is, at its root, two families merged into one property in the early twentieth century: the Spinozzi, of old feudal noble stock, and the Cerulli Irelli, merchants who'd built their fortune trading wine rather than just growing it. The combined vineyards above Canzano sat mostly quiet until Vincenzo and Francesco Cerulli Irelli decided, in 2003, to build something worth the family name. Francesco brought the commercial instincts: he'd spent years as president of Casal Thaulero, a large cooperative winery in the Colline Teramane hills, and knew how much of the area's best fruit was disappearing into anonymous bulk blends. Vincenzo brought the standing, a professor of administrative law in Rome, and the estate has stayed involved since in the Colline Teramane Consortium's work protecting Abruzzo's only DOCG, Italy's top wine-quality tier, tightly defined by geography.

Their son and nephew, Enrico Cerulli Irelli, now runs the estate, finishing what his father and uncle began: turning old vineyards that had grown Montepulciano at high yields for bulk sale into ones built to grow less, better fruit. By the estate's own account, the goal was set a generation earlier still, an ambition "to contribute to the development of Abruzzo and its people," inherited from Enrico's grandfather. Oenologist Nereo Ianni has overseen the wines through the shift.

The Land

Cerulli Spinozzi sits high above Canzano, a hilltop town in Teramo province, roughly 450 metres up, with a second, smaller block of vines near Mosciano Sant'Angelo. Between the two sites the estate farms 53 hectares inside Colline Teramane, the DOCG zone reserved for Montepulciano grown in this stretch of hills. The soils are old river deposits laid down by the Vomano, which still runs through the valley below: gravelly and stony, mixed with heavier clay, alkaline rather than acidic, giving the vines nothing easy.

From the vineyards, the Gran Sasso, the mountain massif that shapes weather across this side of Abruzzo, is visible on one side, and on a clear day the Adriatic on the other: a double view that also explains the climate, warm days but nights that cool sharply once the wind rolls down off the mountain. That day-to-night swing, sometimes 15 to 20 degrees Celsius, pushes the grapes toward deeper colour and more aroma. Montepulciano dominates the plantings, alongside Trebbiano, Pecorino, Sangiovese and, unusually here, a small pocket of Chardonnay.

How They Work

The estate has farmed organically, by its own account, for more than twenty years: feeding the soil with organic matter only, holding back disease and pests with copper and sulphur rather than synthetic sprays, the same treatments certified-organic vineyards use, and opening up the canopy to fight mildew instead of reaching for a fungicide. Whether that practice currently carries formal third-party certification isn't confirmed from what's published; the estate's olive oil, by contrast, is certified organic and DOP, Italy's protected-origin label.

Alongside the farming, Cerulli Spinozzi is well into a slow rebuild of how the vines are trained. Much of the estate used to be planted as tendone, vines trained flat overhead like a roof, a system built for volume, and the family has spent fifteen years pulling it out in favour of Guyot, a lower, tighter method that forces each vine to ripen fewer bunches properly instead of many indifferently. Vine density on converted parcels has quadrupled, from around 1,000 plants per hectare to 4,000, done row by row, not all at once.

In the cellar, the flagship reds follow a long, patient sequence: grapes destemmed but not crushed, so whole berries go into a cold soak before fermentation starts, pulling colour and aroma from the skins without dragging out harsh tannins. After fermentation in temperature-controlled steel, the wine stays on its skins another two weeks before pressing, the source of its signature silky tannin, then ages up to fifteen months in used tonneaux and botti tonde, large round wooden barrels, chosen over new oak so it rounds the wine out without a heavy toast flavour. A further year in bottle follows: Torre Migliori reaches the shelf only after roughly three years of total ageing.

The Wines

Torre Migliori Colline Teramane DOCG is the estate's flagship, and everything else is built toward it: 100% Montepulciano from a single vineyard in Canzano, stony limestone-clay soil, vines pushing 40 years old that on their own produce a small, concentrated crop. After the long maceration and over a year in used oak, it comes out deep ruby with a purple edge, dense with black fruit, small red flowers and sweet spice, finishing on liquorice, powerful but not heavy. It's drawn outside attention too: Wine Review Online and Apstein on Wine have both reviewed it, and the estate won recognition for its Montepulciano at the International Wine Challenge in Vienna, 2015.

The Riserva takes the same fruit and gives it more time, a minimum of three years' ageing, at least one in wood, the DOCG Riserva floor, pushing the colour toward garnet and deepening everything: very ripe red fruit shading into dried forest berries, a wider spread of sweet spice, a wine that reads as more elegant rather than simply bigger.

Less expected is the Torre Migliori Trebbiano: Trebbiano almost never gets this treatment in Abruzzo, usually made fresh, unoaked, and drunk young. Here it goes into wood and comes out straw toward gold, subtle oak behind ripe orchard fruit, meadow broom, saffron and honey, dry but textured, with real length, an ambitious, slightly contrarian style and one of the more distinctive whites in this part of Abruzzo.

For a more everyday introduction, the Cortálto Colline Teramane DOCG, same Montepulciano and zone, younger vines, a shorter stint in oak, is ruby with a violet edge, full of sweet spice and balsamic notes, full-bodied but noticeably more approachable and ready sooner than Torre Migliori.

Why Visit

Cerulli Spinozzi is set up for guests to actually stay, not just pass through for a tasting. La Casina Margherita, its five-room agriturismo, sits among the vines and olive groves, with the same Gran Sasso-and-Adriatic double view that shapes the wine. Mornings start in a breakfast salon with a fireplace and estate-grown produce; upstairs, five bedrooms, each named for a plant on the property, Ginestra, Malva, Lavanda, Borragine, Sambuco, mix antique furniture with modern comfort, with a terrace for watching the sun go down over the vines.

Cellar visits run by appointment and walk guests from vineyard through fermentation to bottling, and the estate opens its doors annually for Cantine Aperte, the region-wide open-cellar weekend. Estate wine, olive oil and other products, tomato preserves, wine jelly, are all for sale on site, so a visit doubles as a chance to stock up rather than just taste and leave.