The ‘Anti-Tuscany’ Will No Longer Be Ignored

Sometimes I think the travel writer’s job is to ruin things, especially when fate lands me in a place that feels itself to have been unfairly ignored. Under-visited by the smart set, The Ignored Place desperately wants in on the global tourism conversation. It longs for to be tagged in scores of Instagram stories, sexy TikTok dances, and Facebook yum-yum moments.

Usually there’s nothing wrong with The Ignored Place. It’ll have a high-quality signature wine grape that grows well in its particular terroir. Trailing behind are artisan foods that are as ignored as the wine.

“Drink me! Eat me!” the Ignored Place shouts.

But having seen this scenario play out in other once-ignored European territories, I want to shout back when I find something really good.

“Shhh. Keep it down! Shout too loud and the world will chew you up and spit you out. And then no one will want you at all.”

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This was on my mind last October when my friend Lucia drove me from the over-touristed capital of Florence across the Arno plain to a place that could be the anti-Tuscany: a famously Ignored Place called Le Marche. If the region is known for anything, it’s for a green-tinted grape varietal named Verdicchio. The Regione di Marche had organized a junket for me and two other journalists. If all went well, Le Marche would be ignored no more.

My friend Lucia is actually from Le Marche. She’d tried living in New York City, but had returned home. As we sped down the winding roads and caught sight of the stunning cliffs and sapphire Adriatic, I mused to my young Marchigiana driver that what I really wanted as a 58-year-old travel writer was something a little quiet, maybe even a little boring.

“You want boring?” Lucia, rejoined, “buy a house in Le Marche.”

“But it’s so beautiful…”

“Peak boring.”

I swore to Lucia that I’d find something interesting for her to do when she dropped me in Pesaro. Then putting on a baseball cap the tourism board had left in my hotel room that said “Let’s Marche!” I went to meet my co-travelers and take on the first wine pairing.

Vineyard descending the hill in the Conero Natural Park (Marche, Italy). Getty Images

I should tell readers of Wine Enthusiast something. I am a true wine enthusiast, but not a professional reviewer. I love wine, drink gallons of it every year, but I never nailed the vocab. Fortunately I was joined on this junket by Betsy Andrews, a well-known American wine critic and poet. After a lame attempt at describing what we were drinking at Ristorante Nostromo, I decided I would let Betsy come up with all the adjectives.

A Bisci Verdicchio di Matellica 2019 was poured.

“Velvety,” said Betsy.

“Velvety,” I wrote.

Then I tasted it and concluded, “Velvety.”

Betsy had been to Le Marche a decade earlier on a similar junket. She recounted how when she wrote her Verdicchio article, she’d written how in the ‘70s, Verdicchios were unsophisticated table wines, never aged, and often put up in kitschy glassware including fish-shaped bottles and sexy-curvy vessels known as lollobrigidas. Now Verdicchios are aged in wood, stainless steel, and cement. It’s worked out so well that the New York-based wine merchant Salvatore Agusta says that Verdicchio is “f*cking amazing wine” and that the best can be favorably compared to Sancerre.

Bisci Wines Verdicchio di Matelica — Courtesy of Bisci Wines

“But can I ask…” I ventured after Betsy noisily aspirated a glass and sloshed it against her uvula, “is wine-writing kind of bullshit?”

“What do you mean bullshit?” She quickly rejoined.

I stuttered before the other Marche junketer, a restaurant illustrator named John Donohue jumped in. “It’s like baseball, Paul,” he said. “If you don’t know the names of the pitchers, can’t tell a fast ball from a curve, it’s no fun. You have to pay attention.”

“OK” I said, chastised. “I’ll pay attention.”

The next days were organized around the Unknown Things in Le Marche and by golly, there are lots. I did not know, for example, that the artist Raphael was from the Marchiagano town of Urbino and that many priceless Renaissance works that had hung in the ducal palace had been spirited away to Florence when the Duke’s line came to an infertile end. I didn’t know that two of those vanished chefs d’oeuvres had turned up recently in a hotel room in Locarno after an art heist case was cracked. I did not know that Le Marche is home to nine varieties of truffles compared to two in truffle-pumped Piemonte. I did not know that Acqualagna truffles pair excellently with aged Verdicchios.

Betsy on a pour from the winery Bucci, served with a tagliatelle al tartufo: “Lovely bitter herb. Lemon peel. A little salty.”

I did not know that Le Marche is the shoe-making heartland of Italy and that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson bought a pair of bespoke Santonis, a local brand of bespoke leather shoes, for eight thousand bucks. I did not know that the region’s seaside restaurants serve a Slow Food-recognized sea-monster stew called Brodetto all’Anconetana, which features more than a dozen types of seafood. I did not know that The Borderlands’ founding function was to protect Tuscany and the Papal States from barbarian hordes.

So, by the time we got to Michele Ronchi’s hilltop Umani Ronchi winery for a tasting, surrounded by untouristed landscapes of small-hold vineyards with a decidedly less trampled feeling than those of Tuscany, I was ready to step up in defense of Marche. I was also ready to take an honest swing at the wine-describing game. Umani Ronchi’s Verdicchio Castello di Jesi 2022 Riserva.

Brodetto all'Anoconetana — Brodetto all’Anoconetana. Stocksy

“Minty,” offered Betsy.

“Actually, we say anise,” countered Michele, the winemaker. “Also, this one we say is more rounded.”

Me: “Anise! Rounded! Yes!”

When we were given a wine made from Marchegiano Montepulciano grapes (which technically couldn’t be called Montepulciano, because that name has been claimed by the Tuscan town of Montepulciano using Sangiovese grapes), I listened for the tasting notes.

“We make this with whole berries to keep the tannins from overwhelming,” said Michele.

Betsy (under her breath): “Actually, the tannins are quite strong.”

Me: “No! the tannins are perfect!”

I had nailed it. I understood. I knew how I would write this article. I’d describe the unique Marchegiano struggle to make a place for itself amidst pretentious, expensive Tuscan wines! Then Michele Ronchi handed me a seven-year-old magazine article that said exactly the same thing, although, evidently, the piece did not quite rescue Le Marche from The Ignored Place. I would need to soldier on.

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A hidden truth about junkets: experienced travel journalists feel trapped by them. We go on the condition that we can escape afterwards. With Marche, I accepted in part because a publisher had brought out my book Goodbye Phone, Hello World in Italian. Thanks to Le Marche, I was able to go on a tour later to tell Italians in the Known Places to stop wasting time on smartphones. I loathe Instagram stories, TikTok dances, and Facebook yum-yum moments equally.

But that’s what Le Marche wanted. So my last meals were tasting menus crafted not for taste, but for the ‘gram. Herein I think the Le Marche promoters erred. What’s nice about Le Marche is not its fancy new Michelin-starred restaurants that are like every other Michelin-starred restaurant in Italy. What’s good are its elbows-on-the-table osterias, its empty national parks, its unjaded citizenry. I got a glimpse of this on my last day, when Betsy and I e-biked down from our hotel in Sirolo through the wildest of switchbacks, flanked by undisturbed forests ending at empty white-sand beaches. Our jaws dropped. Even Betsy was out of adjectives.

Time and Junket, however, wait for no man or woman. Putting our e-bikes in “turbo” mode, we climbed back up to the Hotel Monteconero—a repurposed nunnery so high above the sea we could take in all of Le Marche clear down to Puglia’s Primitivo vineyards, which my travel journalism helped ruin a decade ago.

In the hotel restaurant placed before us was one last epic tasting: nine Verdicchios, two Montepulcianos, and a single Lacrima di Morro D’Alba. Joining us was my Marchiagana friend, Lucia, whom I’d snuck into the tasting in spite of the junket-maker’s warning that only junket members could participate in the “experience.”

Fresh, young, neither overfed nor over-liquored by four days of junket, it was the Le Marche girl who most enjoyed the tasting. While Betsy aspirated, gargled, and spat out the most august flight The Borderlands could muster, Lucia took tiny sips, marveling at each bottle. Afterwards I walked her to her car.

“So now do you feel proud of Le Marche?” I asked as the autumn sun winked out behind the mountains, taking with it the last of the Adriatic’s sapphire hue.

“You know I kind of do,” Lucia said, “I can’t believe we have all this. And these wines… I grew up with them. But it’s amazing to finally see them presented properly.”

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