Montepulciano

Montepulciano is an Italian red grape best known through Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, a wine confusingly similar in name to Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, a completely different wine made from Sangiovese in a Tuscan hill town roughly 200 kilometres away. The grape itself produces deeply coloured, medium-bodied reds with soft tannins and plenty of dark cherry fruit, making it an approachable, food-friendly style that rarely needs long cellaring. It has also found a small but growing following in New Zealand, where a handful of producers are exploring how it performs in cooler conditions. For the grape's classic Italian expression specifically, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo narrows things down to the DOC itself. For the wider Italian range, Italian Wine covers everything else on offer.