Montepulciano (grape)

Montepulciano can be a little confusing as it is both a town in Tuscany as well as a variety of Italian wine grape. Of course the chaos is further complicated by the fact that the town of Montepulciano, whose history goes back beyond the Renaissance and Medieval times, is also famous for a wine, the Vino Nobile de Montepulciano, which being made from Sangiovese (with a bit of Canaiolo Nero and other grapes like Mamolo), containes no Montepulciano at all.

The wine grape Montepulciano, on the other hand, comes from different regions in central and southern Italy and is the second most widely planted grape in Italy after  Sangiovese. (However, it is not planted around the village of the same name as the grape!) However, the grape also appears on the name of a wine, Montepulciano d'Abrizzo. Ripening rather late, it tends to be green if harvested too early. It can give large yields, and tends towards low acidity and soft tannins. When properly matured, Montepulciano can give wines of fairly deep colour, good levels of acidity and extract and fairly good levels of alcohol. As the entries on Kurni (here and here) shows, some Montepulciano can make very good wines indeed.