Pecorino

The first documented source that mentions pecorino dates back to 1526 and is a chapter in the statutes of Norcia. This white grape, in fact, is considered native to the Apennine hinterland of the Marche, in particular the Sibillini Mountains. Today, however, it is cultivated in the entire region, in the Piceno and Abruzzo. With its fleshy and concentrated fruits, pecorino owes its name to the fact that its berries are easy and tasty prey for the sheep (“pecora” in Italian) that pass by the vineyards during transhumance. Rediscovered only in recent years for winemaking, pecorino has proved to be one of the most expressive white grapes in Italy. It gives a wine of remarkable structure, endowed with intense, complex and decisive aromas, with warm fruity notes, hints of yellow flowers, clear echoes of mineral, iodine and aromatic herbs, such as thyme and marjoram, which reveal its origins as a great mountain wine. It has pinching acidity when young, it expresses a great mineral sapidity and a very pronounced persistence, characteristics that make it undoubtedly very suitable for ageing. It is usually vinified as a single variety and still, often in steel alone but sometimes with ageing in wood, even small ones. It is excellent in Piceno in the Offida DOCG and in Abruzzo in the offshore areas; occasionally, in order to obtain a more pleasant blend even when young, it is vinified together with passerina.