2019 Don Rocco Perrucci Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Riserva DOC

This bottle carries a man's actual name on the label — not a marketing flourish, but the founder himself. Don Rocco Perrucci was a landowner in Catignano, Abruzzo, who started producing and selling wine from this land in the 1960s, on ground his family can trace back to the early 1800s through old tombstones and documents. This Riserva is the estate's tribute to him: the fullest, longest-aged expression of everything he started.

Today the estate is called Tenuta Tre Gemme — "Three Gems" — and it's named for something even older than the family itself: a thousand-year-old stone carving of St. Anne and the Madonna child, found on a shrine at the edge of the property, whose three gems are said to represent the spark of intellect, the strength of the heart, and a connection to the earth. Don Rocco's daughters, Carla and Anna Perrucci, now run the estate together, farming roughly 70 hectares organically across two adjoining plots in the Terra dei Vestini — a prestigious Montepulciano d'Abruzzo subzone named after the Vestini, an ancient Italic tribe who lived in these hills long before Rome ever ruled them.

Here's a detail worth knowing before you buy any Montepulciano d'Abruzzo: despite the name, this wine has nothing to do with the Tuscan hill town of Montepulciano or its famous Vino Nobile. That wine is Sangiovese, from Tuscany. This is Montepulciano — a completely different, thick-skinned Adriatic grape grown on the opposite side of the country — and it makes bold, dark, generous wine that has nothing in common with its Tuscan namesake except a name. It's one of the most confused pairings in all of wine, and now you'll know the difference.

And "Riserva" here means exactly what it should: this wine spends significantly longer aging before release than standard Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, which can reach shelves in as little as three months. Riserva rules require a minimum of roughly two years, including real time in barrel, before the bottle is allowed out the door — giving Don Rocco's namesake wine the structure, depth, and softened tannins that only real patience can build.