Controguerra DOC

A small Abruzzese denomination in the far north of the region, hard against the Marche border, covering five communes in the province of Teramo. Controguerra is one of the few Abruzzo appellations that was drawn tightly rather than broadly, and it shows.

The Terroir The registered file describes the zone precisely: an area delimited by the municipal boundaries of five communes, with a fairly homogeneous orography and pedology characterised by broad hills of gentle morphology, clay-silt in nature with sandy intercalations. Those sandy layers matter, because they are what prevents the clay from holding water. The file credits good exposure, good ventilation and the absence of water stagnation with creating the best conditions for the qualities of the varieties grown here. Bottling must take place inside the delimited zone.

Grape Varieties Both halves of the Abruzzese repertoire. Among the reds Montepulciano leads, with Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Ciliegiolo permitted alongside. Among the whites Trebbiano, Passerina, Pecorino and Malvasia. The denomination also covers spumante, passito and a novello.

The Critical Take Controguerra sits directly south of the Marche border and directly north of the Colline Teramane DOCG, and its wines have more in common with both neighbours than with the Abruzzo of the coastal plain. The hills here are gentler and the soils lighter than the heavy clays further south, which gives a Montepulciano with more perfume and less bulk — closer in style to a Rosso Piceno than to a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo from Chieti. It is a genuinely distinct pocket, and almost nobody outside Teramo knows the name.

A Border Zone Controguerra takes its name from the fortified village at its centre, and the position is the point: this is the last stretch of Abruzzo before the Tronto river marks the Marche border, and the wines belong as much to one tradition as the other. The DOC was created in 1996, late by Italian standards, precisely to give a name to a pocket that the broad Abruzzo denominations were flattening.

Styles The range is wider than the size of the zone suggests. Alongside the Bianco and Rosso, the denomination covers varietal bottlings, a passito from dried grapes in both colours, a spumante and a novello. That breadth is characteristic of a small zone trying to establish an identity: rather than narrowing to one wine, it codified everything its growers were already making.

At the Table Teramano cooking, which is the most refined in Abruzzo: timballo, maccheroni alla chitarra with lamb ragù, roast kid, and the region’s aged pecorino. The whites suit brodetto and the Adriatic fish landed at Giulianova. Reds at 16–17°C, whites at 10–12°C.

Benchmark Producers Illuminati, Camillo Montori, Bossanova.