Archivio Montepulciano d’Abruzzo – 2020

Bright deep ruby. Aromas of raspberry nectar, blackberry, espresso, minerals and sandalwood. Penetrating, linear and youthfully imploded, with raspberry and dark red cherry fruit flavours of noteworthy energy and focus. Harmonious acidity and suave but noteworthy tannins provide backbone to the ripe, creamy fruit flavours.  Finishes long with superb inner-mouth tension, but patience will be required to have it develop fully in a good cellar. 2027 – 2031

Family-owned estate, Tiberio specializes in wines made from authentic Abruzzo native grape varieties. At 350 meters above sea level, twenty-three miles inland from the sea near the lovely medieval hillside town of Cugnoli, Riccardo Tiberio found a very old plot of Trebbiano Abruzzese vines, which, despite the variety’s name, is a rarity in Abruzzo. A high-quality variety has nothing in common with other Trebbianos, the 60 years old vines must have been a great sight for Riccardo, who then and there decided to change his and his family’s destiny by quitting his job as an export manager starting his own winery in 2000. Today the winery is run by son Antonio (viticulture) and daughter Cristiana (winemaking) and it makes some of Italy’s best white, pink and red wines.

Intense, the 2020 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Archivio seduces with its pungent aromatic display, blending cedar shavings with balsamic spices, cooling smoke, plum sauce and grilled herbs. Soothingly round and supple, this floods the palate with ripe wild berry fruits and hints of blood orange. A web of fine-grained tannins mounts toward the close. It finishes with staining length and structure, leaving sour cherry and inner sage to linger on and on. Patience will be required yet also rewarded. 2025 – 2030

Cristiana Tiberio’s current releases are simply fantastic. They range from the “entry-level” 2022 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, which can outclass many of the region’s best wines at a fraction of the price, to the spell-binding 2020 Colle Vota and stimulating 2021 Trebbiano d’Abruzzo Fonte Canale (reviewed in my recent vertical retrospective). In 2023, Tiberio handled the conditions of the vintage very well, turning out a mineral-intense Pecorino and a Trebbiano d’Abruzzo that may be one of the most exciting young renditions of this bottling I’ve yet tasted. However, during my July visit in 2024, Cristiana and Antonio Tiberio were coping with a strange phenomenon. The vines had stopped producing after the pergola vineyards suffered from a combination of extremely dry conditions and cold air mass swept through the region in late April. As a result, canopies were extremely small, and clusters and berries were tiny. Cristiana Tiberio explained that she would not harvest the fruit from her older vines in an attempt to help them maintain their health for the upcoming seasons. The damage is sporadic, but she assured me that no amount of rain could fix the problems at this time. That said, there will be wine from 2024 but in much lower quantities and not from her older vines. While obviously grief-stricken over the situation, Cristiana Tiberio explained, “We have suffered and overcome worse conditions when we first started out.”