MARCHEREDS

Le Marche is gaining in popularity as a place to holiday and to buy property, but its wine scene is relatively unknown. Paul Pettengalelooks at the region’s retiring reds.

The Marche region of Italy is known to the majority of us for the fact that it nestles neatly between the long stretches of sandy beaches on the Adriatic coast to the east and the stunning Sibillini mountains to the west. The cool breezes from the mountains make the summers bearable and the relatively temperate climate from the proximity to the warm sea help to take the bite out of the harsh winters (unless you’re living in the mountains, of course!). It’s an area that’s growing in popularity as a place to buy a holiday home with the British, the Dutch and the Germans, and as such it’s increasingly in the mass media. But could you name a wine from the region?No? It has to be said: although it produces a large amount of wine, very little of it is sold outside Italian borders, and so very few of its wines are known and appreciated on an international scale. Much of the wine production in the region is on a very small scale – tiny producers making wines that are largely drunk by the people in the village. Many people in the rural areas of le Marche have small vineyards, the crops from which can be contributed to a communal whole and turned into rustic table wine. If there is a wine from the le Marche with an international reputation then it’s Verdicchio – an easy-drinking white that’s made up and down the long, thin region. This is usually on the cheap side and there’s a good chance that your local supermarket will sport a bottle, though probably no more than one example. The best Verdicchios come from the area just west of Ancona (the main city in le Marche) – recent efforts to increase the quality and lower the levels of production have led to the creation of some very special wines sought after by both the domestic and the international markets. Red wine production, on the other hand, is relatively sparse, with pockets here and there. There are concentrations of production just south of Ancona and around Ascoli Piceno, where Rosso Conero and Rosso Piceno wines are made. These wines are made predominantly with Sangiovese and Montipulciano