Sciarr Montepulciano d'Abruzzo

Sciarr is the line the D'Alesio family dedicates to its forefather Alessio D'Alesio, "lo Scione", whose portrait is on the label and whom the family describes as impetuous and cyclonic. This is the Montepulciano d'Abruzzo of the line, from the estate's certified-organic vineyards at Città Sant'Angelo, in the Pescara hills a few kilometres from the Adriatic.

The producer's sheet describes vines about 30 years old at 300 m, trained on the traditional pergola abruzzese on medium-density clay, facing south-east and south-west. It gives a crop of around 100 hl/ha. The grapes are picked by hand into crates in October, with a careful sorting. The sheet's cellar line is brief and reads like the one for the estate's whites: soft pressing, cold settling and fermentation in stainless steel, with no maceration mentioned.

Ageing is in steel too, for at least 18 months, followed by at least three months in bottle. That is one clear difference from the estate's Riserva, which spends 18 to 24 months in 10 hl Slavonian oak casks and is sold three years after the harvest. This lot of the 2021 was bottled in July 2025, well past the sheet's minimum and later than the Riserva's own schedule.

The 2021 harvest forecast of Assoenologi, Ismea and UIV, written in late August, describes a rainy winter in Abruzzo that built good water reserves. A mid-April cold snap did little damage because budbreak was slightly late. A lack of rain in June, July and August then put unirrigated hillside vineyards under water stress, and the forecast expected lighter bunches and a regional crop 18% below 2020. It found the vines in very good health, with sugar slightly above average. Montepulciano was expected to be picked from the last week of September to the end of October, and the forecast anticipated an interesting year for the reds, provided September stayed favourable.