#15 PRIMA’s ’24 for 24’ Best Wines Of The Year

My recent trip to Le Marches on the Adriatic Coast of Italy proved to be very instructive.  Among a deep love for the area, I came away with a wonderful appreciation of the wine growers who labor deep in these pre-Apennine foothills growing the prized Verdicchio white.  The largest growing region for this very local grape is, of course, the Castello di Jesi appellation, a rather broad and amorphous area spreading between the coastal zone and the hills.  These are rich, fun-to-drink wines with a ton of character.  Jump over the first set of hills, though, and, nestled between them and the Apennines proper you’ll find the north-west running valley of Matelica, a much smaller, much higher and much cooler appellation producing a different sort of Verdicchio.  We conducted a great deal of research from our rented house on the coast, visiting wineries and wine stores, chatting with people, perusing wine lists of the region’s top restaurants and filling our fridge with their recommendations to conduct some serious tastings of our own.  Our conclusion?  We love Verdicchio!  And while we loved a lot of the Jesi based wines we tasted, we developed a real thing for Verdicchio di Matelica!  Overall they were leaner, fresher, more focused and very savory and delicious.  Several of the top wines we tasted came from Borgo Paglianetto, a relatively young property created from the merger of two older ones.  They bottle a series of Verdicchios from various terroirs around their estate, but it was clearly the Petrara that became our favorite.  From a single organically-farmed vineyard facing dead south, it’s harvested marginally later and riper than a lot of the vineyards they farm and, hence, has a bit more color and a bit more weight to the palate without sacrificing that ephemeral mineral quality we came to expect from best versions of this grape. There’s an inescapable florality and green almond aspect to it we found irresistible and, together with its relative palate presence and finishing saline minerality (Matelica is really all about the minerality), it proved to be the perfect partner to whatever we had to eat, from platters of local salumi and stuffed, fried olives from Ascoli-Piceno to Pasta alle Vongole and raw Gamberi Rossi red shrimp.  In other words, this wine could easily become an addiction. Come to find out Petrara is indeed available here in California as well as in the best restaurants and wine shops of Le Marches and for a really good price too. We’ve availed ourselves of some and so should you! Come get your Verdicchio on and discover your new favorite Italian white!