Marche

Marche has one of Italy’s two or three greatest white grapes, a serious red on a limestone promontory, and almost no international profile. That combination has kept its prices low for decades, which is bad for its growers and very good for anyone buying.

The Landscape Thirty per cent mountain, 60 per cent hill, 10 per cent coastal plain. Inland the summers are cool and the winters hard with regular snow; north of Ancona the coast is sub-continental, and to the south, along the Riviera delle Palme, distinctly Mediterranean. Geologically Marche and Umbria sit on the same continental plate, and the difference between them is orientation: here the ridges and the river valleys run transversally, straight down to the Adriatic.

Two Verdicchios The distinction that matters most is between the region’s two Verdicchio zones, and it is geographical rather than stylistic preference. Castelli di Jesi occupies the hills flanking the Esino river on compact Pliocene clay, softening on the gentler slopes and turning sandy-clay-calcareous on the valley floor; it is closer to the sea and broader in the glass. Matelica, inland, sits between 400 and 700 metres and is the only valley in Marche that runs parallel to the Adriatic rather than towards it. It was formed by a fault called the Sinclinale Camerte, a Miocene marine trough that filled with flysch and turbidites — alternating sands and calcareous marls — later covered by alluvium. Its north-south axis gives it a continental climate, little ventilation and a wide diurnal swing, and its wines are tighter, higher in acid and longer-lived.

The Rest of the Map Monte Conero interrupts the coast south of Ancona — a limestone promontory just over 500 metres high, so imposing that it is called a mountain, geologically anomalous on this stretch of the Adriatic and matched only by the Gargano. Its vines sit on the sheltered south-eastern flank in limestone-rich Pleistocene sandy clays, and make Rosso Conero from Montepulciano. In the south-west, around Offida between the Tronto and the Aso, the substratum is Upper Pliocene clay and fine sea sand over Lower Pleistocene clays. Rosso Piceno, the widest zone in the region, runs across clay with occasional sandy bands. And near Serrapetrona in the province of Macerata, on steep valleys of mixed Mesozoic and Miocene rock, Vernaccia Nera is dried and refermented to make a sparkling red passito that exists nowhere else.

Picene Beginnings The record here is thinner than in Tuscany or Campania. Vines probably arrived with peoples crossing from Dalmatia in the second millennium BC, and from the tenth century BC the Picene civilisation of the southern Marche promoted viticulture as part of its trade — learning technique first from the Etruscans and later from Balkan and Greek contacts. The region’s position, facing east across the Adriatic and sitting between north and south, made it a crossing point rather than a destination, which is roughly what it has remained.

The Grapes Verdicchio dominates and deserves to: textured, almond-bitter, capable of fifteen years and routinely drunk at one. Pecorino and Passerina, both rescued from near-oblivion in the Offida hills, are now the region’s other serious whites, with Bianchello in the north. The reds are Montepulciano and Sangiovese, usually blended for Rosso Piceno and unblended for Rosso Conero, plus the extraordinary Lacrima di Morro d’Alba, so floral it smells like a perfume counter, and Vernaccia Nera at Serrapetrona.

The Critical Take Verdicchio is the most undervalued great white in Italy, and its problem was self-inflicted: for thirty years it was sold in a green amphora-shaped bottle as a cheap seafood wine, and the association has proved hard to shake. Buy Matelica if you want structure and Jesi if you want breadth, and buy the Riserva from either. Rosso Conero is the other bargain — Montepulciano on limestone, which is not what that grape usually gets. The region’s weakness is that it has never told anyone about itself, and that is unlikely to change soon.

At the Table Brodetto, the Adriatic fish stew that changes recipe every few kilometres; olive all’ascolana, stuffed and fried; vincisgrassi, the local lasagne; stoccafisso all’anconetana; and porchetta. Verdicchio handles all of the fish and most of the rest.

Where to Start A Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Riserva and a Verdicchio di Matelica side by side. Then Rosso Conero, then a Lacrima di Morro d’Alba out of curiosity.