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Why wineries in Abruzzo are heading for the hills
Rising temperatures and a desire to leave “Schwarzenegger” style big and bold wines in the past is pushing producers in Abruzzo higher up the mountainside. Eloise Feilden reports from the region.
Filippo Bartolotta, a wine journalist and teacher at the Abruzzo Wine Academy, has witnessed a shift in where local producers are planting their vineyards.
“I believe Abruzzo is going to show much more mountain-influenced wines,” he said to a class of international students at the academy last week.
Until now, the region has been largely dominated by what Bartolotta calls “Schwarzenegger wines” — big and bold expressions largely produced from coastal areas.
But Abruzzo is predominantly higher altitude, with 65% of the region taken up by mountains. While it became famous for big and bold “hulk” wines, he says, the reality is that climate change is shifting production towards the hills.
As part of the teaching Bartolotta led a tasting of wines from 15m above sea level to 800m. But producers are going significantly higher than this. Cantina Tollo grows grapes on slopes as well as by the coast. One of its projects is grown at 850m above sea level, and unlike the majority of vines in Abruzzo, is grown on a guyot system.
More than three quarters of the vines in Abruzzo are grown on pergolas to protect them from the sun and heat of the summer days. But higher up in the mountains, the training system isn’t needed. Pergolas require regular maintenance, and need to be hand harvested, making them both expensive and time consuming to pick.
Planting at higher altitudes is therefore helping producers bring down some of their costs — a factor which has been particularly important over the past two years, which one producer described as the worst two harvests in a century. Last year the region was struck by 50% of its average annual rainfall within two months, and yields were down significantly as a result of disease pressure.
In 2024, Abruzzo had the complete opposite problem, with yields reduced significantly due to drought.
As they plant in the mountains, producers are innovating to find ways to retain water in the soils where rain is less prevalent. The large diurnal range at higher altitude also helps protect the vines and retain freshness in the wines.
Abruzzo producer Pasetti Vini is no stranger to the mountains, having begun moving its vineyards away from the coast as far back as 1999, but the family-run winery continues to break new ground. Its latest project is a vineyard planted three years ago at 1,000m above sea level. Here the Pasetti family is growing Chardonnay and Pinot Noir intended to produce a traditional method spumante — the highest altitude undertaking by the winery so far.
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