2019 Valentini Trebbiano d'Abruzzo

The lowly Trebbiano grape, overcropped everywhere across Italy, becomes world-quality, refined, and ageworthy in Edoardo Valentini’s (and now Francesco’s) hands in Abruzzo. The wine, best after years in a cool cellar, shows a kaleidoscope of flavours that are creamy and crisp at once, ranging from freshly toasted hazelnuts to coconut shavings, and has an underlying bracing acidity that lends it an uncanny capacity to age. But let’s pour a glass of this beautiful wine and test the evolution.

Give it a little time to open and out comes that elegant, minerally nose with ripe citrus aromas. Take a sip and experience how full and mouthfilling it is, how piquant and almost fat (but not quite). Note how refined the flavours are, how intensely they are rendered by its swathe of acidity, the sort that gives wines like this great potential for improvement with age. Observe how long the minerally finish is with its notes of hazelnut and liquorice.

Valentini’s wines display a startling naturalness, their tiny, individual flaws only enhancing their profound charm. Taking years to develop their full profile, the wines often need plenty of aeration to blow off the occasional hint of reduction. This all falls perfectly in-step with one of Valentini’s favourite lines, “Natura non facit saltus” or “Nature doesn’t leap.”