Montepulciano

Montepulciano carries the most confusing name in Italian wine. It is a red grape from Abruzzo, on the Adriatic coast. Vino Nobile di Montepulciano is a Tuscan wine from a town of that name, and it is made from Sangiovese. The two have nothing to do with each other, and the grape's own wine is labelled Montepulciano d'Abruzzo.

The grape itself is generous and easy to like. It gives deep colour, soft and rounded tannin, low to moderate acidity and a dark plum and black cherry fruit, sometimes with a note of dried herbs. It ripens late, so it needs a warm site, and Abruzzo's coastal hills give it one. The volume produced is very large, and much of the cheapest is thin, but the price for what is in the bottle is hard to beat anywhere in Italy.

Two things are worth knowing beyond the everyday red. The Colline Teramane zone in the north of the region makes a firmer, more serious version that can age. And Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo, made by running the juice off the skins early, is one of the better dark rosés in Europe, and gets its own denomination rather than being an afterthought.