2017 Azienda Agricola Valentini Trebbiano d’Abruzzo - Italy, Abruzzi, Trebbiano d’Abruzzo (5/19/2023)
– decanted 2.5 hrs before initial taste –
– tasted non-blind over a couple hours on Day 1; revisited on Days 2 and 3 –
NOSE: high-toned; Spanish peanuts skins; fresh ocean spray; apple. Remained in great shape on Days 2 and 3.
BODY: medium-rich maize color; medium bodied.
TASTE: initially tight, with high acidity; and papaya fruit; lots of mineral; very dry; little bit of umami character; light baked lemon note, with a touch of underbrush, too; appley; tart wild ale. Held strong on Days 2 and 3. Tasty now, but this strikes me as a strong Hold — seems like a pretty serious wine.
Agree with both Brian’s conclusion and Dennis’s comment - these wines really call for aging. To me, these Valentini Trebbianos offer very little in their youth and require more than 10 years to show an appreciable amount of complexity. They can be almost surprisingly underwhelming in their youth - and as Brian noted, the young wines have a funky, somewhat wild ale -kind of bretty character to them.
We had this 2017 Trebbiano in a blind whites tasting recently where we rated the wines before revealing the bottles. This was the most expensive wine of the tasting - and the only one that didn’t manage to get a single point!
These are a true wonder of the wine world. I had a 2012 not too long ago and the color was sooooo bright and vibrant you would swear it was 2 years old. My 2 other friends who were catching up before dinner kept asking me, “this is trebbiano?”…and…“this is 11 years old?”…every 5 minutes.
