Emidio Pepe

History

Emidio Pepe founded his estate at Torano Nuovo, in the Colline Teramane of northern Abruzzo, in 1964, building on a family wine tradition that reaches back to Casa Pepe in 1889. At a time when local growers sold their wine young, Pepe set out to prove that Trebbiano and Montepulciano d'Abruzzo could age for decades — an idea then thought eccentric, now vindicated.

The method is famously artisanal: biodynamic farming, hand-harvest and hand-destemming, spontaneous fermentation, ageing in glass-lined cement, and long bottle-ageing in the cellar — with old vintages hand-decanted off their sediment before release. The wines are references of both traditional Abruzzo and the natural-wine world.

Now led by the fourth generation (sisters Daniela and Sofia) and the fifth (Chiara de Iulis Pepe), the estate makes long-lived Montepulciano d'Abruzzo and Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, plus Pecorino and Cerasuolo — its library of aged vintages among the most celebrated in Italy.