Offida DOCG

A relatively new DOCG (2011) located in the southern Marche (Piceno), centered around the town of Offida. It is an umbrella designation for three distinct wines: Offida Pecorino, Offida Passerina, and Offida Rosso (based on Montepulciano).

The Terroir The soils here are largely clay and Pliocene sand. The star is arguably the Pecorino grape (the “sheep grape”), which was rescued from extinction in the 1980s by Guido Cocci Grifoni. It offers high acidity and high alcohol, thriving in these cooler, elevated hills.

The Critical Take Pecorino is the “red wine dressed as a white”—structured, alcoholic, and age-worthy. Passerina is lighter and simpler. The Rosso is powerful but often eclipsed by the neighboring Rosso Piceno Superiore.

How Pecorino Was Saved The variety came within a few plants of disappearing. It had been abandoned as too difficult and too low-yielding, and by the late 1970s it survived in scattered old vineyards nobody had bothered to pull up. Guido Cocci Grifoni tracked plants down in the high country around Arquata del Tronto at the start of the 1980s, propagated them, and planted the first modern block. Every bottle of Pecorino now sold, anywhere, descends from that recovery — which makes it one of the most successful varietal rescues in Europe and a useful counter-argument to the assumption that abandoned grapes were abandoned for good reason.

The Name There are two explanations and neither is settled: that the grape was a favourite of sheep moving along the transhumance routes through these hills, or simply that it grew where the shepherds did. It has nothing to do with the cheese, though the coincidence has sold a certain amount of both.

Three Wines, One Name Offida is unusual in covering white and red under a single DOCG. In practice the two whites carry it: Pecorino for structure and Passerina for freshness. The Montepulciano-based Rosso is sound and lives in the shadow of Rosso Piceno Superiore next door. The promotion to DOCG came only in 2011, which is late for a zone that had been making the case for twenty years, and the delay says more about how the Marche were regarded than about what was in the bottles.

At the Table Pecorino has the weight for brodetto, the Adriatic fish stew, and for olive all’ascolana, the stuffed fried olives that are the local benchmark for anything drunk here. Passerina suits shellfish and the aperitivo hour. The Rosso wants lamb, vincisgrassi, or grilled meat. Whites at 10–12°C, the red at 16–17°C.

Benchmark Producers Cocci Grifoni (the pioneer), Ciù Ciù, Velenosi.