Pecorino

Pecorino is a light-skinned wine grape used in Italy's eastern coastal regions, particularly in Marche and Abruzzo. A classic Pecorino-based wine is dry and minerally, straw-yellow in color and has an elegantly floral bouquet of acacia and jasmine, sometimes spiced with a faint hint of licorice.

The variety has a long, complicated and all-too-common history. It has been cultivated in the Marche region for hundreds of years but low yields saw it replaced by more-productive grape varieties like Trebbiano. By the mid-20th Century, Pecorino was thought extinct. In the 1980s, a local producer researching native varieties investigated a rumor of some forgotten vines in an overgrown vineyard. Cuttings were taken and propagated, and eventually grew enough grapes to make a very good wine in the early 1990s. Since then, the variety's plantings have grown exponentially, and Pecorino is grown in Marche, Abruzzo, Umbria and Tuscany.

Pecorino offers high acidity as well as a high sugar content, making it very useful in the winery. The sugar translates into reasonably high alcohol, but the acidity helps to balance this, ensuring the wines are still crisp and fresh. It does particularly well at higher altitudes where there is good exposure to sunlight and cooling breezes.

One of the foremost confusion when it comes to pecorino is the confusion that people experience upon hearing it. As anyone who is literate in Italian cuisine will expect, pecorino is a common name in Italy, named after ‘sheep’s milk cheese’, sine Pecora is ‘sheep’ in Italian. The name Pecorino means "little sheep" and is perhaps more widely associated with Pecorino cheese, which is made from ewes' milk and is entirely unrelated, save for its etymological link. The grape is so called supposedly because it was a favorite treat for flocks of sheep driven to lower pastures. Pecorino cheese is, coincidentally, a surprisingly good food match for Pecorino wine.