I’ve always thought of verdicchio as one of Italy’s most frolicsome white grapes. And I mean that in a good sense. Tasting through a line of verdicchios, the aromas and flavors flit between piercing, dead-ringer riesling-like lime and wet stone in one bottle to grapefruit or other citrus fruits in the next, maybe with a touch of almond or honeycomb that reins in the acidity-driven fruit a little. Then bottle number three will surprise you with ferns or nettles. And so on. You’re never bored when tasting verdicchio!
And that’s how it went during a recent tasting of a number of verdicchios from Belisario, a top producer in the Marche region of central Italy, which operates as a cooperative made up of 300 hectares of vineyards located in the north-south oriented Upper Elsina valley near the town of Matelica. 100 hectares are owned by the winery, the rest shared among around 150 local grape growers.
Although verdicchio is a playful grape, it has its more serious side, as this week’s wine choice shows. And it’s intended that way. The top-of-the-range Belisario Verdicchio di Matelica Cambrugiano Riserva 2020 was aged in both steel and oak casks for 12 months, then for another year in bottle before release. It offers the tense, focused fruit character that you expect, in this case apple and a touch of savory honeycomb, but here it’s married to a more structured and weightier feel. The overall balance is spot-on and, though it’s nice to drink now, you are left wondering whether to pop it in the cellar for a few years to see how it goes. I went as far as to suggest it will respond favorably to decanting before service.
Marche was long thought to be the ancestral home of verdicchio. It has been grown there for centuries. But modern DNA tests have shown that it is, in fact, identical to Veneto’s Trebbiano di Soave in the northeast of Italy, leading historians to think that it traveled south to Marche in the hands of the ubiquitous Venetian merchants of yesteryear and settled into two principal zones of production, Castell di Jesi and the smaller Matelica, where I believe the most interesting verdicchios are made.
There’s lots more to learn about the verdicchio grape if you’re interested, but for now the message is, if you see a bottle of “Verdicchio di Matelica” on a wine list or on the shelf, and in particular the wine highlighted today, give it a go and have fun!
– Jo Cooke, Tastings Editor
