Emidio Pepe - Montepulciano d'Abruzzo 2010 750ml

Appealing flavors of baked raspberry, orange zest, dried thyme and coffee liqueur ripple across the palate in this elegant, medium- to full-bodied red. Bright and harmonious, with creamy tannins and a subtle, lingering finish of tar and loamy earth notes. Drink now through 2030.  — Alison Napjus

More closed than the 2012. Mellow, beefy style on the palate with mulchy bramble fruit. Intriguing and complex with oodles of layers that will peel back with more time.  Drinking 2018 - 2035 — Richard Hemming MW

Bright ruby. Precise, spicy aromas of ripe red berries, dark plum and violet accented by cumin and caraway seed. At once densely packed and broad but juicy and refined too, boasting terrific acid-fruit-tannin balance and penetrating red cherry, underbrush and sweet spice flavors. This lovely wine is suave and fine-grained and finishes very long. It would be prudent to decant this at least two-three hours ahead; one bottle I had was initially marred by almost unacceptable levels of funkiness, another was instead brilliantly pure and clean, so allowing this wine to breathe a little prior to serving is not a bad idea.

There’s not much I can add to all that has been said and written about this famous estate in recent years. Only 15 hectares (certified organically farmed) and about 80,000 bottles a year are produced (and much sought after by collectors everywhere). If anything, I wish to point out that the wines are actually getting even better, if that’s at all possible. The Pecorino this year is the best I have ever tasted from Emidio Pepe, a real knockout wine, and the 2010 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo promises to go down as one of the four or five best they have ever made. As usual, a lot of aeration is necessary to wave off the typical Emidio Pepe funk, but once that blows off you are left with a truly noble, refined expression of Montepulciano wine in 2010. Well done.