Marina Cvetić: Craft Montepulciano of the future (1)

Gianni Masciarelli died in Munich, in the summer of 2008, leaving his wife Marina Cvetić and his entire family devastated and bringing an exemplary entrepreneurial experience to a bitter end.

He had a tremendous, perhaps excessive, drive to work, a desire to make the fruits of land he was from known throughout the world, much like millions of Italian emigrants have done, and he was always on the go.

In just a matter of years, Gianni not only created a top-notch estate out of nothing but he did much, much more and changed the destiny of wine from his region of Abruzzo forever, bringing it into the modern age.

And he brought it as a whole, including those estates of producers he did not necessarily get along well with. But this is fate of those with a driving vision.

Before Gianni, Abruzzo only had a handful of quality wine producers who stood out among the many more who made bulk wine or wine for blending with those in the north. But those few were (and continue to be) able to express authenticity and provincial family life. In a nutshell: the beauty of remaining the same, with an ill-concealed distaste for anything that was new.

However, Gianni knew perfectly well that Italian wine did not need any folkloristic trappings to sell in London or Singapore.

Needless to say, Montepulciano was the basis for everything, but made without any reductions, nor brettanomyces nor aromatic tricks. It had to be authenticity expressed in fruit and concentration, a real wine which in Abruzzo can reach amazing heights. This was achieved, for example, by Guyot-training the vines, lowering vineyard yield and using new-wood barrels for aging, which allows ample breathing for a wine that needs a lot of oxygen when it begins to age.

It would have been impossible, if not a crime, not to take up the reins of an enterprise that was so brusquely and tragically interrupted.

Especially considering that Marina Cvetić was and still is totally capable of doing so.

In fact, she even expanded the estate and today it employs 77 people, its wines are found in 55 counties and they have vineyards in all of the region’s best winemaking areas. From the hills of Teramo to the Ofena Plain, obviously including the province of Chieti where the estate has its headquarters, in San Martino sulla Marrucina, with the extraordinarily beautiful Castello di Semivicoli as an annex.

Known (rightly) above all among wine lovers for Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Villa Gemma, one of Italy’s greatest wines and the one Gianni was most involved with, the estate now also offers its innovative Marina Cvetić selection. Aside from Montepulciano, the line includes a Trebbiano and a Chardonnay made in the Burgundy style (or perhaps that of the Napa Valley or Sonoma). These are very rich wines that will age long and need a few years to ‘digest’ the wood. Then there are the reds made from ‘international’ grapes including a bold and earthy Cabernet Sauvignon and an incredible Merlot from the Ofena Plain. In common they have a purely territorial appearance and practically no pyrazine notes.

“My husband had the men in the vineyards drink Chateaux Margaux and Petrus so they could understand what he was after. There was no other way,” Marina told me.

Doctor Wine: In 30 years, Masciarelli did what many estates take a couple of generations to achieve.

Marina Cvetić: Did you know that Angelo Gaja told me the same thing?

DW: It must have been very challenging.

MC: It was. Also because all the bureaucracy not only did not help but also represented an obstacle. I have three people working for me who all they do is deal with the red tape. I would prefer to have just one and have the other two out in the road selling wine.  But Italy has a bureaucratic mentality.

DW: I think it can be said that Gianni Masciarelli helped change all this.

MC: Gianni revolutionized the mentality of a whole region. In Abruzzo there is, without a doubt, a ‘before’ Gianni Masciarelli and an ‘after’.

Tomorrow we will conclude out interview and offer a vertical tasting of Montepulciano Marina Cvetić.