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 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.

Source: Wine Searcher