Region:

Marche

Ancient Romans loved the wine from Picenum, what is now Marche, and fossils show that wine has been produced here since the Iron Age.

Prior to the Roman conquest, Marche was inhabited by a Gallic tribe, the Senones, who were conquered by the Romans in 295 BC; after that, the victors established several colonies in the area which they annexed to Rome, with the famous trade routes Via Flaminia and Via Salaria.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the region had a stormy life but was donated to the Papal states, then became part of Italy, in 1860, through the country’s process of unification.

The name Marche (Le Marche is the plural for “mark county” in Italian) refers to the time when the region was ruled by Germans and consisted of many smaller field counties.

Today, Marche is visited for its wonderful sandy beaches, but finding another reason to visit the region is not very difficult.

In addition to being a wonderful, peaceful place, located between the Apennine Mountains to the West and the Adriatic Sea to the East, the region has a hilly landscape, with small, fortified medieval towns, castles and monasteries located on each hilltop. Almost all the towns break the usual perception of Italian chaos and lack of maintenance.

It was the white Verdicchio wine, with its green amphora-shaped bottles, which put Marche on the wine list a few decades ago. Until a few years ago, this was generally a very light wine, considered just an Italian souvenir, but now the wine came to life.

The wine must definitely have something, because according to the legend, it was precisely the Verdicchio which gave the Alaric soldiers courage to cross the Appenines and invade Rome.

Serious winemakers around the slightly larger town of Castelli di Jesi and the smaller Matelica have managed to lift Verdicchio over the medium level of white wines and also found a “serious” bottle to suit the purpose. The amphora-shaped bottle, together with the control of the harvesting period and the vinification, offer an interesting and varied wine.

Although Verdicchio dominated the Marche wines, other white wines follow this path, including the interesting and “resurrected” Pecorino, which has an interesting aging potential.

If white wines were previously dominating the market entirely, it seems that in the recent years the situation is more balanced. Regarding red wines, there are the famous Montepulciano-based Cònero DOCG, the Sangiovese-based Rosso Piceno DOC as well as the full-bodied Offida Rosso DOCG. Another interesing appellation is red Marche Rosso IGT, which, coming from certain winemakers, offers an overwhelming experience with its 13.5% alcohol content.

At the curious end of the scale, there is the sparkling red wine Vernaccia di Serrapetrona DOCG.

The region’s wine center is Jesi, with its interesting regional “enoteca” in the center of the town. The same “enoteca” can be found in the southern coastal town of San Benedetto del Tronto, which marks the border with Abruzzo.

Marche has 20 DOC(G) zones and one IGT zone.

Read more about the wines from Marche by clicking i the top menu in the right side.