Indulge me for a second. My daughter graduate from UGA Friday night. When you graduate Magna Cum Laude with a double major you get to open birth-year vintage Emidio Pepe. Love the wines. Love my kid. Cheers.
2000 Emidio Pepe Montepulciano d’Abruzzo- Italy, Abruzzi, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo (5/15/2022)
Drinking beautifully right now. Nose shows cozy earth tones, meat, wild herbs. Man, there are roses and spring gardens. Lovely. So weightless on the palate, but still such a palate impression of wiry red fruit, rhubarb, thyme, plum. There are hints of barnyardy funk and earth…yet, the wine is so incredibly fresh…like you just picked the fruit. The salinity and lively acidity belie the wine’s age. Pepe wines are special. Maybe not for everyone, that’s good. More for me. Posted from CellarTracker
Dennis, nice note as always. As much as I like Pepe’s wines it’s background noise compared to you’re daughters accomplishments. Congrats, must take after her Mom!
Dennis, did she like the wine? My youngest, who is a couple years older than your daughter (1998) is still at this point primarily a white or rose’ drinker.
Which means that right now, if I pull the cork on one of the mags of Monfortino or Giacosa Asili that I bought for her, I will have to drink it solo
Congrats with your daughter. The few Emidio Pepe i have tasted has been so interesting!
Just bought a 2016 Chave Hermitage for my oldest kid. I will give him the choice of drinking it or selling it when he turns 18, so guess we are selling it
Ha! Same here. My daughter is not a big drinker. Of anything, really, which is cool. She liked it from an educational standpoint, but it was mostly my wife and I that end up finishing her birth-year bottles.
Congratulations Dennis. You should be very proud of your daughter.
I have only had a couple of bottles of Pepe (not easy to find). First one was at a restaurant/wine bar in Rome called Cul du Sac. Very much liked them, but they were young. Would love to try a mature version.
Pepe makes lovely wines, and they have really become a favorite for me over the past few years. The older bottles I’ve had with 20+ years have been remarkable in that they show the tertiary elements of well-aged wine, while remaining incredibly fresh. Really special.
A friend who had lived in Rome in the 2000s has a case of the 2002. He graciously shared a bottle a year ago. It was a revelation! I’d had a couple of much younger Pepes before that, but this was on a different level.
Having enjoyed virtually every vintage of most of his wines many times and held many tastings of his wines where we had quite a few bottles side by side, an interesting pattern emerged for many of us for the Montepulcianos. The ‘5’ vintages were the ones we enjoyed the most. The 65,75,85 and 95 were all spectacular. 83 is a great wine as well. They were not so hard to find when I was drinking them. Hard to believe he’s retired now. Time flies too quickly.
Wow. Lucky you! That’s quite the lineup and you’ve had many it seems.
Oldest I’ve had was the '98 last year (thanks, Klafter!) and it was pretty awesome. Not unlike the 2000 in its evolution at this point. Going back much further expensive these days!