Marche is Italy's easternmost wine-growing region, stretching south from Emilia-Romagna, through the Apennines to the flatter coastal areas of the Adriatic Sea. The warm Mediterranean climate and limestone soils from marine deposits - similar to Tuscany - provide good conditions for viticulture.
Poor connection to the infrastructure of a flourishing Italy in the 20th century, however, led to the fact that until 20 years ago no great importance was attached to wine quality. The rather plainly structured wine was mainly drunk by tourists. In this respect, the Marche is one of the last regions that converted to quality viticulture in the 1990s, and this in a region where Cesare Mondavi was born and who later established probably the most famous winemaking dynasty in America.
One of the reasons for the rather measured quality was the very high yields that Italian wine laws permitted. With the rise of Tuscany and the associated price increases for Chianti etc, expert oenologists were increasingly drawn to the region, since in the Marche still inexpensive wine can be produced from the Tuscan Sangiovese.
In addition to Sangiovese, Montepulciano is also grown among the red wine varieties, and both wines are now of astonishingly high quality, appreciated even beyond Italy's borders. The most famous wines of provenance of the Marche are the red wines Rosso Conero DOC and Rosso Piceno DOC.
Among the white wines of the region, the Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi has made it to great fame; from the hands of good producers is one of the most characteristic white wines in Italy.
