Cooked wine has really ancient origins. The production techniques and the refinement of this agreeable and perfumed elixir are basically the same since the times of Ancient Greece and Imperial Rome. 

The name of our "Cotto d'Arnore" plays both with its being a product of Abruzzo's tradition and with the passion put in its delicate production and its long sleep inside wooden barrels. "Cotto d'Amore" is made from the reduction of the vigorous and powerful grapes of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo vine variety. 

Our cooked wine is semi-sweet, garnet-amber colored and with an intense and fruity aroma with scents of caramelized amber. The flavor is robust. provocative and mysteriously sensual, with a savory aftertaste. Its agreeable consistency vanes depending on the different concentrations and the passing of time.

Vino Cotto teramano is an "amabile" (semi-sweet), flavorful and perfumed wine made with grapes must concentrated through evaporation. Since the discovery of winemaking process, Mediterranean people realized that they could obtain a liqueur of moderate alcoholic content from fermented grapes juice, able to give strength, if drunk with thrift, but inebriation too. Then, when the liqueur was reduced, it grew more stable, sweeter and stronger and was absolutely fitting for a prolonged conservation. 

"Vino Cotto" is made, today like in the past, increasing its concentration and so giving to the wine itself a warm, amber color and a sensual, full and smooth taste. OLD WINE SLOW EMOTION Wine conservation for long years in chestnut or oak wood barrels refines its precious flavor and gives it a sweet, perfumed and velvety body. HISTORY This particular kind of wine, similar in its flavor to the more renowned Vino Passito", is obtained thanks to a technique passed down through the ages by the Greeks goi - back to the IV century B.C. Patricians, emperors and popes of the ancient Rome tasted this wine at the end of their sumptuous banquets and exploited its healthy and exciting features. In 191 B.C., Plautus writes about cooked wine in his play "Pseudolus", calling it "vinum defrutum". Indeed, in the ancient days, the Romans used to produce and drink different kinds of heated musts or wines and among the most frequently mentioned we must dte, besides the "defrutum", the "caroenum" and the "saps"." Vino cotto", also mentioned by Cato the Censor, keeps on having its fame of product of excellence, thanks to its marked flavor and its caramelized scent, dear to the tastes of the refined imperials. In his "Natural History', Cato includes it among the most valued beverages of Italy and describes its preparation process, which is still almost completely similar to the current one. It was a wine typically used to end the banquets of the Roman patricians and emperors "...cotto quando la luna non si vede (cooked when the moon can't be see o's Its preparation lasts a full night when the must is still quiet. Then, during the later centuries it was also valued by popes, kings and princes and used by some prelates as Mass Wine. 

This wine making tradition, preserved through the centuries, also has an evidence in the episode of Hannibal's arrival. The Carthaginian general, leading character of the second Punic War against Rome, during a stop with his exhausted army in Abruzzo, was given the advice of washing and massaging the horses with some old cooked wine. The ancient cure method healed the animals from the scab and the whole army was refreshed and encouraged too. In 1500 A.D. Sante Lancerio, wine steward of Pope Paul lit, cites the cooked wine and celebrates its quality introducing it in the sacrificial ritual of the Holy Mass.

Vino Cotto teramano, being a smooth wine„ even though with a notable body has a sweet caramel flavor, not intrusive, which pleasantly lasts on the palate until the final sip It could be considered a forerunner of the "meditative wine" now so popular among experts and intellectuals. In 1700 A.D. it was exported in barrels on ships sailing from the harbor of Ancona towards many European countries in which it was renowned, appreciated and marketed. "Vino Cotto" carried with itself the whole charm of Mediterranean lands, full of sun, rich of flavors and perfumes, like ft was an actual ambassador of what was yet imposing itself as the Italian style. Even the English writer Edward Lear talks about "Vino Cotto" In the account of his journey 'net tie Abruzzi"(in the three Abruzzi) in 1843-1844, he recalls he tasted "some wines aged many years, just slightly inferior than the good Marsala' referring to what is defined as "cooked wine". 

The tradition proves that, in the past, cooked wine was consumed by farmers even during tinng works in the countryside, such as harvesting, to regain strength and energy. The custom was to exchange the earthenware flask, which kept fresh the wine for a brig time The beverage was also given in small amounts to pregnant women and to women who had just given birth to a child, as if it was a methane, "Vino Cotter was also grven to particularly fragile pregnant animals or to ones in poor conditions; an old custom was to massage limbs and shoulders of the newborn ones to strengthen them (whether they were humans or animals). Weddings, baptisms, holy oommunionsi patron saints' festivals and religious celebrations had as tablemate the inseparable "Vino Cotto" together with the proverbial hospitable manners of Abruzzds people To every appreciated guest was gladly given a jug of pure water, pride of an uncontaminated land, and at the end of the meal, a glass of cooked wine to be sipped, judged and commented 

People started to consider the barrel of cooked wine as a subject of inheritance division "Vino Cotto teramanor was regarded as an actual cknestc good; the barrels were proudly put in plain sight in the houses of big landowners as well as they were jealously guarded in the artstocracys houses Until the '50s, some old bevels Std sumved n the lands °labium walledspin dunng the battles for the Italian Unification.

Stated as PRODOTTO TRADIZIONALE TIPICO LOCALE (typical traditional local product) by Regione Abruzzo of Italy (Abruzzos regional governmen 'Vino Cotto" derives from the working process of the must freshly obtained from red and white grapes pressing. The ageing period inside wooden barrels is fundamental. This process enriches the wine with gustatory and olfactory features, which make it a refined and sophisticated elixir. Vino Cotto is a sweet, agreeable liqueur wine. Color: from dark-red to ruby red, from red to amber-red. Aroma: fruity with scents of caramel and ambP:-- Flavor: pleasantly sweet, smooth and sensual. Scent: intense, its speck aroma and firmness make it a serious rival of other dessert wines. Thanks to its specific taste it is perceived as rich, with scents of caramel in its sweet version. It can be dry or sweet due to residual sugar presence. Savory aftertaste. its agreeable consistency vanes wti different concentrations changes and the passing of time. 

"Vino Cotto" is a concentrated wine obtained from the processing of many grapes: Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, Passerina, Trebbiano, Moscato, Montonico and Chardonnay. It an old traditional product, made by must boiling. When it is severely reduced a variable percentage of squeezing must is added, allowing the fermentation to restart, forrnerty stopped by the cooking evaporation. At the beginning, the partial boiling of the new wine added to the rest of the normal production was a means to guarantee its conservation. This process follows the ancient custom of introducing scorching irons inside the vats to moderate an out of control fermentation, which could make the product sour. "Vino Cotto" is always present in the after meal conversations; as an ideal companion it follows the tablemates in a cenacle route in which they gladly remain. 

The conservation of wine in chestnut or oak tree refines its precious flavor and gives it a velvety, sweet and fragrant body. All this features allow Vino Cotto to be put among the most loved liqueur wines both from inexperien-ced consumers and from experts ones able to distinguish all of its endless qualities. Surely, this elixir fully belongs to the reign of the great dessert and meditative wines. This nectar is served in small amounts that can be renewed in measure and time, allowing the consumer to enter in a dimension of growing sensorial awareness. PROPERTIES Recently the Agrarian Department of the University of Teramo published on a popular and respected North American magazine the results of a study that claims the high antioxidant power of this wine thanks to the sugars caramelized during the must pasteurization. 

This gives a specific healthy effect to the heart processes and thecellular ageing and has a strong antioxidant power that fights cellular ageing. This confirms the traditional belief that sees it as a powerful restorative. a lotion to heal skin and muscular problems, an energy drink, a peacemaker beverage during contracts' conclusion, a provocative dessert.

You can find us in an old neighborhood on the centuries-old walls surrounding Montorio al Vomano, a town in Abruzzo at the feet of Gran Sasso d'Italia mountain chain, in the Gran Sasso-Laga National Park. The village, resting on a hill, during nightfall resembles an old Christmas crib crossed by a rushing river, the Vomano, which, after a long journey dives into the Adriatic sea following the same path of the ancient Roman road of the salt (via Salaria) called "via Cecilia". 

The town had a strong attitude for craftsmanship and commerce, a village full of mills, workshops, bakeries, oil mills, wash houses. Buildings in which used to work shoemakers, coopers, horseshoers, dyers, laundresses and farmers. The town has different convents with just as many churches open to the village's life. The perimetral walls preserved its identity and safety. In such a place you can find our Winehouse, just inside an old oil-mill, in a neighborhood once location of old food factories and inside which the river came with all its power to make millstones and smith's hammers work. 

The production and conservation of our Vino Cotto" lies on this typically Italian inheritance. Here we work to satisfy the modem consumer's demands, who pays attention to high quality and who is always searching for valuable products linked to history and land Here we preserve over time an ancient production technique of a sweet, smooth and precious wine, an aristocratic wine, an excellence of Abruzzo's wine culture: your "Vino Cotto", our COTTO D'AMORE, ISABELLA RISERVA 1999, S. ROCCO, FROZEN for Mixology, RISERVA NO:ILE, TESTIMONIUM, SELEZIONE 1977, MISERICORDIA Liturgical Wine.

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