New Releases from the Marche: Something for Everyone

Wine is a serious matter in the Marche. There are roughly 14,200 estates in the region, working with about 17,000 hectares of vines. Although cooperatives do exist, wine production is very much a family affair. Roughly 80% of the Marche’s wines are DOC or DOCG, a fact that does not guarantee quality in and of itself (individual producer skill is important) but illustrates the region’s potential. In fact, the region is blessed with many high-quality native grape varieties and unique terroirs. Even better, the average level of quality is quite high, which means that finding a truly bad wine is difficult. A handful of overoaked and rustic reds are still being made, but for the most part the Marche’s wines deserve to be on shopping lists of wine lovers everywhere.

The Grapes Of The Marche

One of Italy’s most important native cultivars, Verdicchio takes its name from verde (green), the color of both the grape and the wine (even with age, Verdicchio wines never lose their green tinge). One grape, Verdicchio, yields two wines, Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi and Verdicchio di Matelica, but the wines are very different due to completely dissimilar terroirs. Other Marche white grapes include Maceratino (also called Ribona) and Biancame, two native grapes long thought to be similar to Trebbiano Toscano but that have greater potential for making fine wines.

The Marche is also the birthplace of Pecorino, currently Italy’s hottest white grape, but unlike winemakers in nearby Abruzzo, most Marche producers tend to macerate the must on the skins for extended periods of time, making for some very thick, and, to my way of thinking, less enjoyable Pecorino wines. Producers who throttle back on extraction, such as Cocci Grifoni and San Savino/Podere Capecci, are most successful. But, as in Abruzzo, Pecorino’s recent popularity has led to a wave of new bottlings that barely remind me of their variety.

Passerina is another up-and-coming variety, at least in the Marche and Abruzzo where the same Passerina variety appears to be grown (there are many different biotypes of Passerina planted all over Italy, many of which I am sure are not Passerina at all). Passerina wines from these two regions are similar: usually more floral and less structured than those made with Pecorino.

The two red grapes typically associated with the Marche are Montepulciano and Sangiovese, which are usually blended together in varying percentages. International varieties are also grown; they were misguidedly planted here like everywhere else in Italy during the boom years of the ’80s and ’90s but they rarely yield wines of interest. Absolutely unique to the Marche are Vernaccia Nera, Vernaccia Rossa (actually a biotype of Aleatico) and Lacrima, three aromatic red grapes that can give highly idiosyncratic but outstanding red wines. The two Vernaccias are unrelated; the former is used to make the wines called Vernaccia di Serrapetrona and Serrapetrona Rosso, while the latter is used to make Vernaccia di Pergola and Pergola Rosso. Both varieties can make dry and sweet red wines, and Serrapetrona is historically associated with delightful sparkling wines. Lacrima is the grape from which Lacrima di Morro d’Alba is made, one of Italy’s most pungently fragrant wines of all.

Vineyards around the small, artificial lake at Andrea Felici

The Wines Of The Marche

The Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi production zone includes virtually all the towns in the province of Ancona, the Marche’s main seaport. “Castelli di Jesi” refers to a string of very pretty medieval hilltop towns of which the most famous is Jesi. The denominazione can be divided into two sections. The northernmost one, which extends to the valleys of the rivers Miso and Nevola, is roughly rectangular in shape and includes towns like Arcevia, Corinaldo, Ostra and Pergola. A smaller area extending south towards the Esino river (an area including towns like Apiro and Cupramontana) and Jesi is the “Classico” zone. The Castelli di Jesi production area is mainly characterized by gently sloping hills, a moderate climate and mainly marl and clay soils, but there are differences worth knowing about. For example, the area around the town of Serra de’ Conti has an almost marine climate, with warmer average temperatures resulting in earlier harvests (typically finished by the second week of September) and richer, softer wines.