But not everyone was convinced. In the 1960s, Abruzzo’s red was known as innocuous vin de soif, and most of the region’s 7,500 wine growers sold their fruit to cooperatives. In the 1980s, modernism struck, and a new and vulgar Montepulciano emerged alongside the old: oaky, extracted and still-born. Neither style ever won acclaim, though they continue to have their adherents.

Pepe’s vision of an artisanal and age-worthy wine was thus entirely without precedent, and for several decades it seemed hopelessly quixotic: one village wag notoriously joked that Emidio was building castles in the sky. Today, the bottles in the Pepe cellar are still stacked in crenellations to satirise that wisecrack.

Born into a family of farmers in 1932, the young Emidio was hard at work in the fields well before his tenth birthday; by age thirteen he was adept at grafting vines. In 1960, Emidio began to contemplate producing his own wine. After a few experiments, he released his debut 1964 vintage and began building a reputation for quality, one client at a time.

Emidio Pepe, now 85, has turned over winemaking to his daughters Sofia and Daniela. And more recently, the dynamic Chiara De Iulis Pepe has joined the estate as the fifth generation!