Bianchello del Metauro DOC

The white of the lower Metauro valley, made across eighteen communes of the Pesaro-Urbino province between the Apennines and the Adriatic at Fano. It is a single-grape denomination and one of the least pretentious good whites in Italy.

The Terroir The registered file identifies three forces acting together: the catchment basin of the river Metauro, the Apennines behind, and the Adriatic in front, which between them create a microclimate it calls ideal for Bianchello and Malvasia Lunga. That is an accurate description of a short river valley running north-east off the mountains to the sea — cool air down the valley at night, sea breeze up it by day, on clay and calcareous hills that rarely exceed 300 metres.

The History The file makes a specific claim about sparkling wine: viticulture here is of ancient tradition, as is the production of spumante, which has been known for centuries, with proof, it says, already in the writings of Francesco Scacchi and his De salubri potu dissertatio — the treatise generally credited as the first serious study of why wine takes a second fermentation in the bottle. The file dates it to 1577; the work is more usually placed in the early seventeenth century. Either way, the point stands: this valley was thinking about bubbles a long time ago, and the denomination still covers a quality sparkling wine.

The Battle The Metauro is better known to historians than to drinkers. In 207 BC the Roman armies met Hasdrubal Barca on this river and destroyed him before he could join his brother Hannibal in the south — the engagement generally regarded as the turning point of the Second Punic War. The battlefield is somewhere under these vineyards.

Grape Varieties Biancame, which is what Bianchello is, with Malvasia Bianca Lunga permitted in support. The name comes from the pale colour of the grape. It is neutral in the wrong hands and quietly excellent in the right ones.

The Critical Take For decades Bianchello was the wine you drank with fried fish on the Fano seafront and thought nothing about, and most of it deserved that. The change has come from a small group of growers — nine of them formed an association to make the case — who dropped yields and started treating Biancame as a variety rather than a filler. What emerges is genuinely good: green apple, almond, chamomile and a saline bite, at 12 degrees of alcohol, for very little money. It also ages far better than anyone expects.

At the Table The Adriatic answer: brodetto alla fanese, fried anchovies, moscioli, passatelli in fish broth, and the casciotta d’Urbino from the hills above. Serve at 9–11°C.

Benchmark Producers Fiorini at Barchi, farming organically across three generations, and Claudio Morelli at Fano.