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Emidio Pepe – A Peculiar Lodestar in a Crowded Sky

Many a vigneron will self-identify as a “purist” or a “traditionalist”, but Emidio Pepe and his daughters take these terms to new extremes. After thinking a bit how to characterize just what it is that the Pepe family does, the word “process” came to me and indeed it does perfectly crystallize their approach to winemaking. But first let’s set down a little background on Emidio Pepe.

Azienda Agricola Emidio Pepe is located in the town of Torano Nuovo in the northernmost part of Abruzzo, just a few miles from the border with Marche, and only about 9 miles from the Adriatic seacoast.

The Pepe’s produce only three wines (one white, one red, and one rose`) from two grape varieties. The white is made from Trebbiano d’Abruzzo, and the red and the rose` are made from Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. Their production is 100% organic – they do not use, and never have used any kind of chemicals or pesticides on their vines. The only substances used in the vineyards are compounds of sulfur and copper (used to stave off certain vine diseases) and these only because they are substances that come directly and naturally from the earth. Harvesting is done entirely by hand. No tractors have ever been utilized. Up to this point, the Pepe’s approach to winemaking mirrors the processes of many other organic winemakers, but once the fruit heads to crush, all bets are off. Pressing of the Trebbiano is done BY FOOT in large wooden troughs that allow the must to run off into neutral barrels which are then used to transport the must to the fermentation tanks. Emidio believes that bringing wine into contact with anything metal mars a wine’s subtleties. The Montepulciano, and hold on to your hats folks, is crushed BY HAND. And when I say by hand, I literally mean by squeezing individual bunches of grapes, one by one.

Fermentation is affected in small, open-topped glass-lined cement vessels without any temperature control whatsoever. Sofia Pepe claims that the cool temperatures in their cellars, in combination with small sizes of the concrete vats, do not allow the temperatures to rise high enough to damage the nascent wine. Further, the Pepes do not add any yeasts to the musts to induce the fermentation, relying rather on only the natural, airborne yeasts that float through their farm and settle on their grapes. In fact, they emphasize that certain weather conditions favor the proliferation of certain yeast strains over others, and that the particular strains that predominate in any given vintage can subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) alter the finished wine’s character.

After fermentation, the Trebbiano rests for 6 months in the vats, and the Montepulciano for two years. The wine is then bottled very slowly (almost at a trickle) so as not to “disturb” the wine. No filtration of any kind is done. In fact, the Pepe’s believe that the inclusion of the sediment is absolutely essential to the wine’s development. Whatever maloloctic fermentation goes on happens entirely in bottle. The corked bottles are then laid down to age for as long a time as the family feels is necessary, and according to the characteristics of the vintage (the wine is sampled periodically to judge its progression). When the wine is felt to be ready, Emidio’s wife uncorks BY HAND each and every bottle, pouring the finished wine from one bottle into another (no funnel, no nothing), essentially racking off the sediments. As one might expect, it usually takes 13 “unfiltered” bottles to make 12 labeled and “ready for the shelf” bottles.

I think after this short recapitulation, the concept of process, and perhaps even the notion of the employment of an EXTREME process become clearer. The Pepes work on the ideas that less is more, and that nature does it best. They truly believe that a wine is a living entity, and that each vintage MUST be different from either the previous or the successive, or they have intervened too much. Now for the more experienced wine folks in the audience, a few red flags may have already gone up. Pepe’s process is clearly heterodox, but many of even his most traditionally-minded peers call him hyper-dogmatic and even shoddy or simply lazy. Many say he uses the “ultra-natural” doctrine to justify his slipshod ways.

But I guess that the proof is always in the pudding, and as many of you might guess, these wines are not of the Jell-O instant ilk. These are U-NIQUE wines. In fact they are so idiosyncratic that they bear little resemblance to any other Montepulciano-based wine, from Abruzzo or anywhere else for that matter. Many wine-lovers at the vertical tasting of Pepe’s wines that I recently attended commented on the fact that if served these wines blind, pegging them for Trebbiano d’Abruzzo and Montepulciano d’Abruzzo would be nearly impossible. This fact for many wine people flies directly in the face of the notion of “typicity”, or the idea that a wine must display certain “core” characteristics associated with the grape variety or varieties from which it is made. The idea is that there will always be variations in winemaker style and other aspects due to terroir, but many consider wines that lack “typicity” to be inferior products. No matter, this point is not a black and white one, but rather just the usual gradation of grays. And the more one examines Pepe’s wines, the more one begins to realize that this is Pepe’s stock in trade. These are indeed “extreme” wines that elicit and will continue to elicit a dizzying array of opinions. Some simply swoon over these wines’ honesty and fascinating exotic rusticity. Others bluntly dub them a vinous version of the emperor’s new clothes, especially when price is considered.

So to return to my original premise, these are wines that trade on the process of their production and their marathon-worthy longevity (and the sometimes radical changes that time brings to them), rather than a “take it to the bank”, “gold standard” predictability that so many classed-growth Bordeaux represent for example. And in essence, Pepe’s wines are quite literally complete philosophical departures from the accepted norms of 99.9% of ALL winemakers. An artistic analogy comes to mind here. At certain point in the development of western art, the concept that all art must be “beautiful” to be judged as “good” begins to crumble, or at very least what is deemed to actually be beautiful begins to broaden. And so it is with Pepe. These wines are not first and foremost “things of beauty” but rather brutally honest reflections of their environment – a sort of cinema verite`with fruit. If you’re after “perfected” wines, these bottlings are not for you. But if the concept that one can literally drink a sculpture of that particular ridge in Torano Nuovo, Abruzzo during the scorching summer of 2003 appeals to you, there is no one who can convey this with greater verve than Emidio Pepe. One last word. These wines are not cheap, but the time and passion that go into making them cannot be brought to bear without a significant price tag. These are not wines for dabblers and guzzlers. These are true "vini di meditazione" (meditation wines) that can thrill and challenge, and possibly even disappoint and anger, but they are NEVER pedestrian. So, if you've got the scratch, and an open mind, these wines offer a thoroughly UNIQUE experience.

Here are some brief tasting notes on the wines we’re currently offering. The vertical tasting that I attended (from 2003 through 1964!) was conducted within a fairly strict time limit, and there were a dozen wines on offer, so the notes below represent quick sketches as the time permitted rather than extensive analyses.

Emidio Pepe Trebbiano d’Abruzzo 1995 – Initially smells like a working farm captured in a bottle, good, bad, and everything in between…then ground brown spices, dried flowers, apricot, hay, straw…very intense, cohesive, and concentrated in the mouth…no one else could have made this wine in any other place. This wine is like listening to a strange and fascinating story twist and turn. Wow.
$69.99/bottle on sale

Emidio Pepe Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 1993 – Nose of Bananas Foster mixed with a sweaty horse, dried cherries, cigar tobacco, sweet flowers, earth and cocoa. Very powerful, but still amazingly ethereal in the mouth…still very young...this wine is just beginning to show its potential as it changes before your nose in the glass...Pepe's wines are one-of-a-kind and very challenging. Not for the beginner!
$109.99/bottle on sale

Emidio Pepe Montepulciano d’Abruzzo 1975 – Cornucopia of dried fruits and wildflowers with notes of sautéed broccoli rabe, prune juice, and wood smoke…like a magic potion...changing by the minute…where will this wine end? Despite the vintage, this wine is still very youthful...This wine is not for everyone, but some will find it simply spellbinding.
$178.99/bottle on sale

Tom Ciocco