Verdicchio

Verdicchio is a straightforward Italian formation: 'verde' (green) plus the Marchegiano dialect suffix '-icchio,' creating a word that means something persistently and characteristically green. The grape's skins retain a yellow-green tinge even at full ripeness, unlike most white varieties that turn golden or amber as harvest approaches. The name is a color description that became a proper name, and then a wine appellation, and then a DOC.

The grape has grown in the Marche since at least the fifteenth century. Agricultural records from the Castelli di Jesi area mention it around 1452, and guild documents from Ancona reference a green-skinned white grape in 1569. Genetic research completed in 2008 confirmed that Verdicchio is closely related to Trebbiano Toscano, though the two varieties diverged long enough ago to develop distinct phenolic profiles. The relationship suggests an ancient common ancestor somewhere in central Italy.

The wine spent most of the twentieth century trapped inside a clever bottle. In 1953, the Fazi Battaglia winery introduced the anfora: a waisted, amphora-shaped glass container modeled on ancient Greek pottery. The shape moved product, but it also signaled cheap export table wine. Serious producers began rejecting the anfora in the 1980s, and the Istituto Marchigiano di Tutela Vini enforced stricter standards for the Castelli di Jesi and Matelica zones.

Verdicchio di Matelica Riserva received DOCG status in 2010. The wine's natural acidity and relatively high phenolic content give it an aging capacity unusual for Italian white wines. Bottles from good producers in the Matelica zone, grown at higher elevation than the Castelli di Jesi lowlands, can develop complexity over ten years or more. The green-skinned grape that acquired its name from a color proved to have far more character underneath than the novelty bottle ever allowed anyone to notice.