In December 2013, the story broke that Italy’s greatest white wine vineyard had been devastated by a freak blizzard. And for the next two years, the world waited to learn the fate of that vineyard's iconic wine: Valentini's Trebbiano.
 
Finally, it became clear that (perhaps due to reduced yields) the wines would go on to even greater heights, but with drastically reduced production. And the situation was made worse by the estate’s longstanding practice of bottling only the best 5% of what they made and selling the rest off in bulk.
 
Yet through perseverance and great contacts, we managed to secure a small parcel of the utterly brilliant 2015 Valentini Trebbiano. 
 
Passing the Torch
There may have been no greater cult figure in Italian wine than the late Edoardo Valentini, whose Trebbiano d’Abruzzo became legendary for its intensity, complexity and ageworthiness. And its mythic status was only fueled by its extreme rarity and Valentini’s reluctance to talk about how he made it.
 
Key to this wine’s transcendent quality is its vines, originally planted by Edoardo in the 1950s. Convinced that the ancient local clone, Trebbiano d’Abruzzese, was best for conveying the soul of his terroir, Valentini ripped out the existing vines of the characterless Trebbiano Toscano clone and replanted with the indigenous one.
  
Edoardo passed away in 2006 after making these amazing wines for fifty vintages. But his son Francesco, schooled from an early age in his father’s singular ways, may be making Trebbiano, Cerasuolo, and Montepulciano of even greater consistency and elegance, while sacrificing none of the wine’s transcendent character.