Ep. 194 Henry Davar (Vinitaly International Academy Faculty) on Verdicchio | Discover Italian Regions: Marche

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. This podcast is brought to you by Native Grape Odyssey. Native Grape Odyssey is an educational project financed by the European Union to promote European wine in Canada, Japan, and Russia. Enjoy. It's from Europe. Hello. This is the Italian wine podcast for being multi-water. My guest today is Henry Avire. Henry is a faculty member of the Italy International Academy, which is an educational organization, trying to unpick the intricacies of Italian minor today, Henry is going to talk about Verdicchio, the Verdicchio grape, with specific reference to the Marque air region of Italy, which is in, on the Adriatic coast of Italy. Welcome, Henry. Thanks, Marty. Really be here. Great. It's, not often I get to interview some somebody quite so eminent, a faculty member. So when we think about Vedicchio, and the Marque, what are we talking about, in general? Just give us a little sound bite about what we can expect to hear over the next, half an hour or so of chat. I think it's important first to isolate the Vedicchio grape and the car characteristics, a liver deco grape, and then really dig into the the territory of the market. When we talk about the territory of the market, we're gonna be distinguishing two specific growing areas that castellia the AC, which is the more adriatic in influenced coastal influenced region, and then we'll talk about Matellica, which is way up in in preapidines, if you will, a more continental, more rugged climate, if you will, and you can always certainly express that as well. Okay. So let's start off with the characteristics of the Vedicchio grape. Vedicchio itself takes its name and the color green verde means green in Italian and the grapes certainly, have this distinct green hue although they tend to lighten up, become more golden as the growing season progresses. The screen here is actually super important to maintaining a sense of freshness and aromatic intensity over the duration of aging of radicchio wines. So I've tasted older radicchio wines going back fifteen, twenty years. And it sees radicchio wines that still maintain this suggestion of green freshness that, the the most intensely aromatic, the most fresh expressions of radicchio tend to have in common. Okay. So you mentioned in those two zones, Varticchio from Yeezy, the Castare de Yeezy, which is the the castles of Yeezy, which is the historic, and metallics, which is the bigger zone of the two. Yeezy is by far the bigger and most and better known of the Chueritans, about talking about three as in the hectares. Sorry, metallica, rather, is about a tenth the size of three hundred hectares. And it's probably not surprising that, the castellio de AC appylation is just more well known, certainly in my market. I think Matellica is is less less imported and less well known, more likely because of the smaller, hectorage overall. Okay. So let's get a maybe we can start by getting a a sense of the size. We got the, obviously, got the size of the you know, but the let's see if we can get a sense of VAZ as a as a place. Are there lots of villages in the YayZ region? Or There are producers in the Marquay, especially in the Castidity YayZ growing area. I've actually done a lot of research into region broken down the region into ninety nine MGAs. And an M and an MGA is a? It's a MENTiographic. So what that means, it's a crew, just like you'd have in Barolo or in Barabaresco. I think this is admirable, but perhaps a little bit over enthusiastic on the part of the growers here. I think, certainly, if we talk about the the area in terms of communes, communes like Barbera, communes like Montecarosto or Cooper Montana and Piavalto, or sorry, San Paulo on these, southern side of the Asino River, that's probably more useful to what we need to understand Yayce regionally at this point. Okay. So in terms of Hector Ridge, how big is Yaycee roughly in terms of its Vadigio? We're talking about twenty hundred, twenty eight hundred or so hectares. Okay. And Matellica, about three hundred, almost a tenth. In terms of, who we got these two zones, the Yeezy, the big one, the Yeezy, which is close to the Adriatic and Matellica, which is sort of isolated in its own little, valley should we say? If I'm going to Yeezy and I want to visit some vineyards, and I'm thinking, wow, there are all these, you know, there's a it's a big area. Can you break that down for me maybe into say two parts? Certainly. Yeezy, you can divide very is simply to to Northern or, let's say, the left bank of the Asino River, and then the southern slopes or the right bank of the Asino River at the travels from the west to the east, into the Adriatic. Right. So that Asino or is it is is a key sort of marker? I think so. I think so. I think the landscape certainly changes in the north around the towns of Bada, or the commune's, if you will, of Bada, and Corinado, for example, you have a very different landscape. The market is known for being a a very influential agricultural region, and you get these rolling hills, gentle hills, and the the landscape seems to define the wines as well. Verdicchio is known for having a high acidity, but wines are never austere in the AC area, especially on the northern slopes. You know, someone's joked that one time that Chablis, for example, should be painful when young. I think the wines of the Castelier are never painful in terms of their their angles and acidity. On the southern slopes, you start to see more of a rugged, not quite extreme, but certainly a greater presence of slopes. So higher altitude vineyards in the south, more extreme slopes. I think the wines show this a little bit, definitely a little bit of a higher acidity a greater pungency. Things change completely as we move into Matallica. Okay. So let's move off to Matenica. So if I I'm gonna say right, I I've I get this broad divide between the north side of the area in the south side. So I'm gonna turn it with two bottles, one for the north and one from the south. I'm gonna arrive in metallica. I'm gonna open a bottle of metallica, and what am I gonna say? Oh, it tastes pretty much like the two Yay z wines I brought. Or am I gonna say, oh, this is a little bit different? Yeah. I didn't mind. Absolutely. Because you're When you talk about EAC, you're talking about Adriatic wines. When you move into metellico, we're talking about the mountains. And although we're still talking about white wines, we're talking about white wines. At times, can resemble minds in terms of their structure. I think that really plays into the particular, microclimate of Matellica itself. Again, we're across this initial ridge of the pre aponines in almost in Staten Island, mountains, and we're in a north south facing valley completely cut off from this tempering influence. So that we're much more continental. What does that mean for the growing season? It means that during the summertime, the daytime temperatures rise a lot higher. So it gets a lot warmer. So what does word mean for grapes? It means higher sugar accumulation, higher potential alcohol. What are we getting in the evenings? We're getting cooler nighttime temperatures that high internal temperature exchange allows our grapes to maintain a higher acidity. So we've got a verdicchio with higher alcohol, higher acidity. And because we're looking to find this balance, we're extending our growing season. What happens then? We're developing these aromatic precursors. This this potential for complexity in our wines. So not only do we have a fuller bodied wine. We've got a wine that's higher in acidity and, with the potential to develop much more complex flavors granted. This is a lot of this is gonna remain to con producer, savvy so to speak, but you're getting a fuller bodied, richer, almost white meat worthy verdicchio rather than the Prodeto pairing that you'll find in the AC for the Adriatic. Brodeto. I mean Brodeto. Well, interestingly, the Marquis is probably the region furthest north on the Adriatic coast at Greeks have come to. So Ancona actually means Elbo, and it's a Greek word. Ancona just like the the the leading town in the in the region. Ancona is the place you fly into when you fly into the market. So, it means Elbo. And, one of the main foods of Ancona is the potato, along with foods like Crudo, the Italian sushi you might expect to get along the adriatic. These are perfect foods for the Verdicchio of Yazee. If you wanna talk about moving into the mountains, we're talking now about not Crudo, but carpaccio, white meat, even the local lasagna called Vincis Grasi, something that's more stick to your ribs kind of food. The radicchio Matellica pairs with that immaculately. You've got a wine of structure of persistence. We tasted a lot of radicchio during our Vine International Academy course here in and one of the notable things about the verdicos we tasted, these were often reserve a level of verdicos of incredible concentration, incredible complexity, incredible length. I think with Italian white wines, if you sometimes blink, you miss these wines, But if you taste carefully and you taste for concentration and length, even in a young wine, you can get a sense of the potential, especially for aging. And the eligibility of, Verdicchio, particularly, it is quite a mystery for most people. Most people acknowledge that Verdicchio is one of Italy's greatest white wines, but what they don't know, and I think what most people haven't had a chance to taste is mature verdicchio, because Verdicchio can maintain pain, this youthful aromatic profile, even ten years from its production. But as you start approaching twelve, fifteen years, these wines become remarkably complex. Think Smaraugt Grenervelt inner, three think, Shannon Blanc in contrast for the younger style. Think muscadet. Think Chablis. Alright. Now you get this counterpoint in Coastal and, mountain wine, which I think, ridiculous, too well, but again, in two very, very different styles. Great. Well, I think we've got the skinny on Verdicchio, the two Verdicchio from the market region, which is Verdicchio de Castar de Yersi, which is the coastal Verdicchio. And then we go up into the mountains. We get articchio wine, white wine, but a very different beast from the Matellica region because it's a mountain wine. It's got a mountain wine and a coastal wine. I'm gonna say thank you to my guest today, Henry Divar, faculty member of the Vin Italy international academy for his comments and knowledge of the wines made in the market region from the Verdicchio grape, Verdicchio de Castadiersi and Verdicchio de Madeliga. Thanks very much, Henry, and, look forward to hearing your next broadcast. Thanks you're looking forward to next one. Thanks. This podcast has been brought to you by Native Grape Odyssey, discovering the true essence of high quality wine from Europe. Find out more on native grape odyssey dot e u. Enjoy. It's from Europe. Follow Italian White Podcast on Facebook and Instagram.