Abruzzo and the most “magic” wines of Italy, starting again from wine tourism

Charming but reserved, far from mass tourism and dedicated to the slow one and to the “silence”, guardian of incredible nature and of its biodiversity, extraordinarily rich in stories, myths and legends: it is all this, and much more, to make Abruzzo the most “magic” land of Italy. Thanks also to its wines, reds, whites and rose wines: from the renowned Montepulciano d'Abruzzo to the fresh Cerasuolo, from the powerful and versatile Trebbiano to the small but already famous productions of Pecorino and Passerina and to the emerging native wines such as Cococciola and Montonico or the interesting new sparkling wines. All of them are high quality productions, the result of the work of a new young generation of viticulturists and enologists, following the footsteps of the great personalities who marked the history of wine of the Region and of Italy, and of a territory naturally predisposed to viticulture (more than 33. 000 hectares planted with vines for an annual production of 130 million bottles, of which 80% is represented by Montepulciano), which, also on the wave of the successes of critics and the market, now become the “narrative voice” of wine & food experience on which Abruzzo, under the direction of the Consortium Vini d’Abruzzo, aims to restart, alongside sea and mountain tourism, and putting together all its magic.
In the meantime, more than 200 “standard-bearer” labels of Abruzzo wine are the protagonists, just in these days, with their new vintages of the great tasting of the Consorzio di Tutela dei Vini d’Abruzzo at Villa Estea in Torino di Sangro (in the next days, video on WineNews and review of the best tastings in the newsletter I Vini di WineNews, ed). “After so many months of digital activities we strongly wanted to welcome the wine press in the area in order to tell and let them taste the many new proposals of our wineries - explains the president of the Consortium Valentino Di Campli - and we continue to work on the quality and identity of the wines with very interesting results, and with Montepulciano as a driving force on the whole wine proposal, from whites to rosés, gaining more and more interest from consumers”.
Merit also goes to a territory whose microclimate is ideal for producing grapes of extraordinary quality. A territory made of roads and paths beaten by man with difficulty among vineyards, ancient “tratturi e tratturelli” which tell the story of transhumance, and of rivers on the echoes, instead, of the maritime civilization. And suddenly, in the vastness of the mountains and in total symbiosis with their nature, here is one of those rural villages that are the essence of Italy but you wonder how we managed to build them so much are perched, alternating here and there by the ruins of a legendary castle, once an important lookout on those ancient routes of travel and trade, or those of a hermitage that, once reached and only on foot on “mystical” paths, recalls the sad story of Pope Celestine V, “he who made the great refusal” as Dante indicates, who in the Divine Comedy places him in the Antinferno among the Ignavi. A territory made, above all, of the important and beautiful history of L’Aquila, city-symbol of the earthquake and of that same nature from which we cannot protect ourselves, but that “Immota manet” of Virgilian memory. A territory where from the mountains you can see the Adriatic, from the sea you can see the Apennines: with the National Park of Abruzzo, that of Majella, the “mother mountain”, and of Gran Sasso, the “sacred mountain”, with their myths and legends - one third of the territory is protected, as in no other Italian region, among green parks, oasis and reserves, caves, waterfalls, karst plateaus and rocky walls, where the Marsican brown bear lives, the Abruzzo chamois and the Apennine wolf - and with the Costa dei Trabocchi, compared by D’Annunzio to “colossal spiders” and described in the tragedy “Il Trionfo della Morte” as “machines that seemed to live on their own life” by the poet from Abruzzo, as are intellectuals such as Ignazio Silone, Benedetto Croce and Ennio Flaiano, alongside the poet Ovid, the first to speak of the wine production of his land. All symbols of biodiversity also witnessed by many products that are Slow Food Presidia and that, next to the local cuisine, become great tristate dishes. To accompany them, a biodiversity of wines equally varied and extraordinary.
“A wine is its territory and in Abruzzo this link is so evident and deep that it convinced us to choose wine as the narrating voice to accompany those who come to our Region, with a territorial marketing project that takes shape in the App Percorsi-Abruzzo Wine Experience”, adds Di Campli on the project that has been developed over the last few years and wants to put into a system all the supply chains involved in tourism: catering, hospitality, food, tour operators (next to the portal www.abruzzowineexperience.com). “In this moment of restart we wanted to turn the spotlight on our region that has much to offer to wine tourists. In the App there are over a dozen routes to choose from: from the sea to the cities of art to the mountains, from the lakes to the villages and hermitages, stopping in the wineries scattered from the Trabocchi Coast to the heights of L’Aquila to savor the taste of wines that tell the story of this land and to live special wine tourism experiences where wine is the protagonist but always in a different and original way”, concludes the president of the Consortium, about the many formats proposed, from the classic tastings with visits in the vineyards and in the winery, to the picnics in the vineyard which are very popular, with the goal of showing the many faces of Abruzzo through the many enological proposals.