Italy's most decorated native white hides in the Marche. Verdicchio — the name points to the green tinge its berries keep at full ripeness — is genetically the same vine as Trebbiano di Soave, but it is between the Castelli di Jesi and the mountain basin of Matelica that it becomes serious: lemon-saline, bitter-almond whites whose great riservas can age two decades.
Its reputation nearly drowned in its own success. The amphora-shaped bottle designed in the 1950s made Verdicchio an export phenomenon, then a kitsch shorthand for cheap Italian white; the grape outlived the gimmick. Judged today on the wine rather than the flask, it collects more top national ratings than any other Italian white variety — vindication for a vine that never left home.