This crisp, citrusy Italian white is part of David Lynch’s regular rotation now that Spring is here in earnest.
Sometimes, a wine’s label perfectly captures the style and spirit of the juice inside. This is one of those times. I’m not saying buy the wine because it has a pretty label—that’s never a good approach—but rather that the wine in this bottle makes good on the promise of its packaging. We had a wet, cold winter in northern California (which is nothing, I know, compared to what others experienced), so for me, tasting this bright and fragrant white was a harbinger of Spring. It was a bloom of florals and dewy freshness that had me craving asparagus and favas and other freshly sprouted stuff that comes with the season. And seafood, of course. Among the countless native grape varieties found throughout Italy, Verdicchio—the pride of the Marche region—has evolved into one of the country’s most distinctive whites. Readers of a certain age may remember the days when cheap and insipid examples of Verdicchio were put in fish-shaped bottles and shipped to us in mass quantities for indiscriminate sipping with scampi or scungilli. Like Chianti, and Soave, Verdicchio became kind of a caricature—and, like Chianti and Soave, the wines have struggled to shake off their tourist-wine image. Today’s Marche Verdicchio from Fulvia Tombolini is light-hearted and inexpensive but it also demands to be taken seriously. You will sip it with interest, and pleasure, much as you would a well-made French Muscadet or Spanish Albariño. We’re a long way from the fish bottle here; the scampi, meanwhile, can stay.
The Tombolini family’s winemaking roots in the Marche go back to the 1920s; the estate is in Staffolo, one of the many communes in the province of Ancona that comprise the Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi appellation (DOC). Ancona is an Adriatic port city and a jumping-off point for ferries to Croatia and Greece, and just to its south is a magnificent stretch of Adriatic coastline in the Parco del Conero, a national park. The “Castelli di Jesi” are a series of medieval-era fortified towns, including the namesake commune of Jesi, that stretch inland into the foothills of the Apennine mountain range. The soils in the Castelli di Jesi are predominantly clay with some limestone, with an interplay of mountain and maritime influences (the Apennines form the Marche’s border with Umbria on this part of the peninsula). It wouldn’t be exactly accurate to call “Fiora” a “coastal” white—Staffolo is a good 40 kilometers from the coast—but there’s definitely an Adriatic influence here.
As I noted above, there’s a kinship between Jesi Veridcchio and other coastal whites—perhaps not as much salinity as Muscadet or Albariño but similar freshness and herbal, citrusy twang. “Verdicchio” translates roughly to “green one” and indeed there’s a “green-ness” in the typical example that will remind you of Austrian Grüner Veltliner as well. “Fiora” is produced in the most straightforward manner: it is fermented and aged briefly in stainless steel tanks before being bottled and sent out into the world for immediate consumption. It would be a perfect wine to order at
Giacchetti, a spectacular seafood restaurant in Portonovo, a beach town on the Adriatic—a place I desperately long to return to, especially after tasting this wine!
In the glass, the 2016 “Fiora” is a pale straw-gold with green highlights at the rim, with bright, fresh aromas of salted lemon, citrus blossoms, green apple and melon, fresh green herbs, a slight hint of sea spray, and a touch of chalk. It is more about fruit and florals than savor and minerality, with a long, aromatic finish driven by great freshness. It is designed to open and enjoy now at 45-50 degrees in all-purpose white wine stems, and the first sip makes it obvious what you should be eating with it—any kind of raw, grilled, or fried seafood topped with copious amounts of lemon juice and herbs. I’m no longer in the restaurant business, but I still have a by-the-glass list—at my house—and this wine just got a permanent placement. How could I not break out a classic shrimp scampi to go with it? This has to happen, and soon!
— David Lynch
