Marche

Like I'm hop over the Apennines.

I'm a huge fan of Abruzzo and Marche.

Those are also two places that are under touristed by Americans.

Lots of lots of marketing happening from the Abruzzo family.

So for everyone, the Alba truffles are...

the premium ones, and all the others are not, which is not true at all now because, of course, the majority of the truffle now come from the Appennini Mountains, which is between Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, Marche, which is our region.

I love the Marche.

Where Verdicchio comes

from,

And the way that we find craftsmen and artisans is by word of mouth, talking to locals, exploring and serendipity.

I found a really lovely ceramics pieces just by following my nose around the corner in a town in, in Marche called Urbino.

That was really fun because it's got a l- lovely little story to it.

I met the artist and, you know, she told us all about her passion for this particular shape that I purchased.

We want to find someone inside the company, okay, already known by the people that work inside the company.

Uh, this already happened, uh, for example, in Marche region, in Macerata, uh, the, the old seller, uh, leave the company since one year, and we found the comp...

We, we found people inside, uh, a very young, 32 years old, manage very well the company, merge, for example, Salvucci is, uh, is a competitor.

We bought Salvucci, and we merge, uh, a company, uh, with, uh, 25, 30 people, and he want to grow with us.

Well, I had a-- we-- I did a-- not to kind of rehash it, but, um, we sort of discovered a new region of Italy the other week and-- When was it? No, it was last week.

Le Marche.

And we went to Cerreto as well, didn't we?

I think that's, that's the town and the same region.

Oh, okay.

It's the region, Le Marche.

So like Le Marche is the area.

Right, right, right.

But tensions flared again in 283, when a group of Senone's Gauls, possibly at Etruscan urging, attacked a Roman ally and defeated the Roman army sent to respond.

That led to Rome's first invasion of Gaul, or more accurately, Cisalpine Gaul, meaning Gaul on this side of the Alps from the Roman perspective, roughly corresponding to the eight northernmost regions of modern Italy and Marche, which was the target of the current invasion.

The Senones Gauls were defeated, and the Roman colony of Senigallia was founded in their former territory, prompting another battle with allied Gauls and Etruscans at Lake Vadimo in 283, which was, of course, another Roman victory.

This was effectively the end of organized, unified central Italian resistance to Rome.

on Italian Wine Podcast.

Today, we travel to Le Marche, to Civita Nova Marche in the province of Macerata to meet my guest, Lucrezia Bencivenga, who is the commercial director of the Cantine Fonte Zoppa Winery.

Buongiorno, Lucrezia.

Many thanks for being my guest today.

How are you? And is it a beautiful day in Le Marche?

Buongiorno, and first of all, thank you for having me.

Yes, it is a beautiful day in the Marche region, and actually we are a couple of days before the first day of harvest, so it's always an exciting moment of the year.

Last year we finished in December because we have many varieties and we harvest Vernazza Nera di Serra Petrona in December.