Pecorino

Pecorino was almost extinct within living memory. It is a white grape of the Marche and Abruzzo, in the hills of central Italy, and by the 1970s it had been abandoned almost everywhere in favour of higher yielding varieties. It survived in a few old plots, and its recovery is credited to Guido Cocci Grifoni, who found surviving vines in the hills near Arquata del Tronto around 1982 and propagated them.

The name means of the sheep, and the usual explanation is that flocks moving between the mountains and the coast used to eat the grapes on the way. The vine crops very lightly, which is exactly why it was pulled out, and it ripens early, so it must be picked before the summer heat strips its acidity.

The wine justifies the rescue. It is fuller and firmer than most central Italian whites, with real structure, a high natural alcohol and a saline, herbal character over citrus and green apple. It has enough body to take a little oak and enough acidity to age five years or more, which almost nothing else in the region can claim.