Valle Reale

The people behind it

Valle Reale began in 1998, when the Pizzolo family decided to restore an old Montepulciano d'Abruzzo vineyard they had found on land bought some years earlier, in a valley closed in by mountains a short distance from the town of Popoli. The estate's website speaks of a love of farming inherited from generations of a farming family, and tells how watching that vineyard led the Pizzolos to study the origins of the grape. The research, carried out with Professor Leonardo Valenti of the University of Milan, traced the oldest evidence of Montepulciano to mountain areas close to Valle Reale.

The vineyard they found was an Abruzzo pergola planted in 1960. Tended and brought back into production, it became Vigneto San Calisto, the estate's first cru, which the winery calls "the father" of all its vineyards: after a long selection of the best vines, buds of mountain Montepulciano were taken from it and grafted for the new plantings. From that vineyard grew the farming and agronomic project of Valle Reale, which according to the estate is carried on today by a close-knit group of people, across vineyard, cellar and vegetable garden.

Sources: Valle Reale — Noi · Valle Reale — L'orto

What they make

The winery divides its vineyards into parcels it calls crus, each named after the history of its site: Vigneto di Popoli, Vigneto San Calisto, Vigneto Sant'Eusanio, Vigna di Capestrano and Vigna del Convento. Each has its own wine and its own page, and Valle Reale's range is best read that way, vineyard by vineyard and vintage by vintage, rather than through generic labels.

Vigneto di Popoli carries the most history. Part of its rows runs in front of the ruins of a cave cellar the estate dates to around 1300, where Benedictine monks coming down from the monastery of San Benedetto in Perillis, a tiny village clinging to the mountains behind the estate, made and stored their wine. Here is the one-hectare parcel of Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, a white that was called a "cold-climate trebbiano" in its first vintage; next to it lies the larger vineyard of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, the offspring of the oldest vineyard on the property. The rows face the Majella and the Morrone mountains and are bordered to the west by a dense oak wood. The website also describes the wildlife met while walking among the vines: deer, badgers, foxes and, on rare occasions, a few wolves.

Sources: Valle Reale — Vigneto di Popoli · Valle Reale — I vigneti e l'orto

Ingredients and territory

The vineyards grow on a plateau 350 metres above sea level, in two neighbouring municipalities: Popoli, in the province of Pescara, at the head of the Peligna valley, and Capestrano, in the province of L'Aquila, overlooking the Ofena plain. In all there are 46 hectares, more than half certified organic and the rest in conversion. The soils are lean and stony, much the same in both places; the climate is not. At Popoli the cold air flowing down from the Gran Sasso keeps conditions dry and ripening is very slow, lasting into early November; the Ofena plain, known as "the oven of Abruzzo", brings ripening forward by two or three weeks.

In the cellar Valle Reale works with the vineyard's own yeasts. Since the 2008 harvest, the estate explains, all the grapes from its crus have fermented spontaneously: a few days before picking, small amounts of grapes are gathered from chosen spots in each parcel, pressed, and the must is kept warm until the yeasts on the skins start fermentation. Sometimes the trial has to be repeated; once the best yeast has been chosen, that must is added to the whole harvest of the same vineyard. Next to the estate's headquarters, on two hectares, there has also been a biodynamic vegetable garden since 2015, where the estate, as a guardian farmer, grows cereals, vegetables and pulses from old Abruzzo varieties.

Sources: Valle Reale — I vigneti e l'orto · Valle Reale — Vinificando come un tempo · Valle Reale — L'orto

Recognition

In Gambero Rosso's Vini d'Italia 2026 guide, Valle Reale's Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Vigneto di Popoli 2016 won Tre Bicchieri, the guide's highest award. Gambero Rosso published the list of winning Abruzzo wines on 20 September 2025: sixteen labels, spanning Cerasuolo, Pecorino, Trebbiano and Montepulciano. In its commentary the editorial team notes that Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, the cornerstone of tradition, is finding new vitality thanks to producers choosing softer fermentations, less invasive oak and attention to cooler soils.

The awarded wine comes from a vintage some years back, 2016, and the page the estate devotes to that vintage tells its story. 2016 was marked by a severe frost in April; the historic Popoli pergola came through it less damaged than the vines trained on wires, and the hot summer allowed the Montepulciano to reach full ripeness. The result is a wine the winery describes for its structure and aromatic complexity, made to develop over time. The vintage produced 34,620 bottles of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo DOC Vigneto di Popoli; after the same frost, the Trebbiano from Vigneto di Popoli was the only Trebbiano cru made that year.

Sources: Gambero Rosso International — Tre Bicchieri 2026, the best wines of Abruzzo awarded by Gambero Rosso · Valle Reale — Vigneto di Popoli, annata 2016

Going there

Valle Reale is in Contrada San Calisto, at Popoli, inside the Majella National Park; the contact page also gives GPS coordinates for getting there. The estate stands where three protected areas meet, the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park, the Majella National Park and the Sirente-Velino Regional Park, and a short walk from the springs of the Pescara river, an area protected by strict rules where, the website notes, the Apennine wolf, the Marsican brown bear and the chamois live.

Among the vineyards of the plateau stands Sant'Angelo Extra Muros, which the estate dates to the twelfth century and which, despite its name, was not simply a church: the Benedictines of the monastery of San Benedetto in Perillis used it as a three-level gravity cellar, with the crushing on the top floor, the must collected on the middle floor and the racking beneath limestone arches, plus a twenty-metre gallery cut into the rock. Restoration, begun at the end of 2025, has brought it back to light. According to the website it can be visited by booking from Monday to Thursday, 10 am to 1 pm, between January and August, by writing to info@vallereale.it; the same address and the number 085 9871039 are the estate's channels for any other enquiry.

Sources: Valle Reale — Contatti e recapiti · Valle Reale — La montagna · Valle Reale — Sant'Angelo Extra Muros

Products and flavours

The region

Abruzzo