Verdicchio is one of Italy’s seven or eight best native white wine grapes: you can rank them any way you like, but there’s little arguing to be done on the basis of the sheer numbers of great wines made with each, Carricante, Fiano, Garganega, Greco, Malvasia Istriana, Ribolla Gialla, the authentic Trebbiano Abruzzese (not the many grape varieties that are conveniently passed off as such), and Verdicchio are the top dogs in the Italian native white grapes fight for leader of the pack. Unfortunately, Verdicchio’s reputation was harmed by the many industrial, insipid white wines made with it decades ago, and bottling it in folkloristic but weirdly-shaped glass vessels such as amphoras and fish did little to improve on that reputation. Have you ever seen Latour, Screaming Eagle, Clos Ste.Hune or a Scharzhofberger bottled into anything but a normal-looking bottle? Exactly. Furtehr compounding the problem was the fact that Verdicchio, like Riesling, can give you a very good wine even at high yields, and so there was little incentive to push the quality envelope in times when white wine sold well. And so it is that today, when there is instead a lot more competition in the wine market with quality the name of the game, Verdicchio wines, even the best ones, have trouble selling, because, perhaps somewhat unfairly, they cannot seem to get past their reputation. But it should not be so: Verdicchio can give amazing wines of great longevity and complexity.
