Vines in Abruzzo have developed hand in hand with the history of the region: an open frontier, a space with fluid and mobile boundaries, vulnerable to invasion from the sea and from the land.
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From the Hellenic grapes brought by the Byzantines to the international varieties that arrived after the Great War, and all the cross-fertilization with neighboring territories in the intervening centuries, we have inherited the legacies of Pecorino, Passerina, Sangiovese, and Trebbiano intermixed with those of Cococciola, Bombino Bianco, and Montepulciano.
Inexorably exposed to the world over the centuries, the land of Abruzzo has absorbed the practices and customs of other peoples, making it difficult in the long run to clearly define its unique identity.
Although cited by Pliny and Cocumella, Ovid and Martial, Sante Lancerio and Serafino Razzi, the history of Abruzzo wines is fragmented and polycentric. It runs in a thousand different narrative rivulets passing through towns and villages, Roman castra, fortresses and high spires engaged in shifting alliances and conflicts, defending boundaries and reaffirming the identity of a homeland—actually, many homelands.
And the germinative broth is thickened by patricians and the middle class, foreign families and clergy, all seeking the mythical origins of the foundation and traditions of Italy.
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Today, science and research have finally determined a truth: Abruzzo can aspire to a distinguished position in international enology thanks to the diversity and fragmentation of its lands, the altitudes and geological origins of its markedly differentiated soils, which create the many homelands of its grape varieties. And after centuries of cultivation, these varieties can legitimately claim to be Abruzzese, protected by the mild Adriatic Sea and the Maiella and Gran Sasso d’Italia massifs.
An overwhelming, enveloping, and magical nature is what makes the Maiella National Park an unmatchable setting, where the biotic community boasts over 2,000 species, corresponding to over 65% of the entire flora of Abruzzo and nearly 30% of all flora in Italy.
THE NATURE OF THE MAIELLA
Here nature surprisingly combines Mediterranean, Alpine, Balkan, Pontic, Illyrian, Pyrenean, and even arctic elements. The notable range of altitude of the Maiella also allows for the existence of more than fifty different ecotopes: characterizing the dominant forested landscape are beech stands up to an altitude of 1,800 meters a.s.l., accompanied by the presence of holly, ash, and maple, while the Mugheta della Majella (populated by Pinus mugo) represents the broadest swath of “contorted scrub” in the Apennines and one of their most singular habitats.
Many species arriving here with the Quaternary glaciations and the receding of the Adriatic Sea have found an ideal habitat here, either at high altitudes, where the peaks and the meadows are blanketed in snow from autumn to summer, or on the lower slopes and ravines. The receding of the glaciers and the subsequent genetic isolation led to biodiversification, producing new species and subspecies representing a natural heritage of inestimable value.
With its Monovarietali line, Codice Vino pays homage to the natural environment of Abruzzo, dedicating the labels of some of its wines to the most representative species inhabiting this intense and fascinating landscape.
