Serrapetrona DOC

A tiny denomination in the province of Macerata, in the Marche hills below the Sibillini, and the home of one of the strangest wines in Italy. The sweet sparkling version holds its own DOCG as Vernaccia di Serrapetrona; this DOC covers the dry red.

The Grape Vernaccia Nera is the whole appellation, and the name is a trap: it has nothing to do with the white Vernaccia di San Gimignano, and nothing to do with the Sardinian Vernaccia di Oristano. “Vernaccia” in Italian wine is a category of convenience rather than a variety, applied historically to any number of unrelated grapes. This one is a black grape grown essentially nowhere else, and the registered file is explicit that the choice to cultivate and vinify it here was a human decision that shaped the denomination.

The Triple Fermentation The famous version is the sparkling one, and the method has no parallel. Around 40 per cent of the harvest is set aside to dry on racks through the autumn. The rest is fermented normally — the first fermentation. In winter the dried grapes are pressed and added, restarting fermentation — the second. The resulting wine is then bottled or tanked for a third fermentation that produces the bubble. The dry red made under this DOC uses the same grape without the drying, and is the rarer of the two.

The Terroir The file grounds the denomination in centuries of continuous cultivation rather than in soil chemistry, and is candid that the interaction of human factors — growing technique, vinification, and above all the decision to persist with Vernaccia Nera — with the natural conditions is what gives these wines their peculiar and unique character. The zone is small, hilly and inland, at altitudes that hold acidity in a grape that needs it.

The Critical Take Serrapetrona is a curiosity in the best sense: a sweet sparkling red made by a method nobody else uses, from a grape nobody else grows, in a zone of a few dozen hectares. The dry red is honest and firm, with sour cherry and a bitter finish. Neither is a great wine by any conventional measure, and both are worth drinking precisely because nothing else tastes like them.

At the Table The dry red suits the Marche table: vincisgrassi, grilled lamb, sausage and aged pecorino. Serve at 15–16°C. The sparkling sweet version belongs with almond biscuits, dried fruit and, in the local manner, with cured meat — a pairing that sounds wrong and works.

Benchmark Producers Alberto Quacquarini, Serboni, Fontezoppa.