Tenuta Mattei
(Winery in Verdicchio)

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About Winery and Wines

Danilo and Stefania are the heirs of a historic family of Marches winemakers, in the area of Ancona. The family-run business originated in the early twentieth century, when Danilo's grandfather cultivated the vineyard and the fields of his property. At the time, the grape harvest was given to the local wineries who made wine to be sold in the local market. To date, the Tenuta Mattei owns about 100 hectares of Verdicchio, Lacrima, Montepulciano, Sangiovese and Merlot vineyards. The annual production is about 8500 quintals of grapes with a total production of about 1.150.000 bottles. At the end of the 1950’s the company passed on to his son Mario and his wife Maria, who increased the cultivated area of vineyards and began to sell the wine directly, first locally, then throughout Italy.

The peculiarity of these areas are the clay-like soils of marine-alluvial origin, rich in water that arise in a strip of land enclosed between the Adriatic Sea, to the East, and the chain of the Apennines, to the West. The region of Marche is considered to be the most favoured to grow this grape, but with regards to its origins various hypotheses have been put forward. The most accepted is the one that supposed its appearance in the Marche following the settlement in the region of some Venetian colonists, called to repopulate it following a terrible plague epidemic. This hypothesis is supported by recent genetic studies that would reveal a very close relationship between the Verdicchio and the Trebbiano di Soave and the Trebbiano di Lugana, known Venetian vines. The history of Verdicchio has its roots in very ancient times but, although it was already known among the ancient Romans, the first evidence of a wine made from its grapes dates back to 410 AD. when, towards the height of the crisis of the Roman Empire, the peninsula was crossed by hordes of barbarians. It seems that Alaric, king of the Visigoths, going towards Rome with the aim of looting it, had first passed by the castles of Jesi to stock barrels of the ancestor of today's Verdicchio because nothing, according to him, gave to his men just as much “sanitade et bellico vigor” (health and military strength).

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Wineries to visit in Verdicchio