La Monacesca - Marches, Italy
Aldo Cifola.
MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL,
WHO MAKES THE BEST MATELICA OF ALL?
Verdicchio is not only the crown jewel white of the Marches, it is one of the finest whites in Italy, a country crowded with beautiful white wines. The two most celebrated Verdicchio appellations are Castelli di Jesi and Matelica, the former toward the sea, and latter inland and taking influence from the Apennine Mountains. Still, the sea influence is powerful in Matelica as this wine zone is an upturned ancient seabed chock full of fossils and white-faced soils: Chablis-like.
La Monacesca's two Matelica Verdicchio wines are the epitome of the appellation. Owner/winemaker Aldo Cifola's issues his regular Verdicchio and Riserva similtaneously a year apart. We believe this year's combo of 2017 and 2016 is the best from this almost direct imports winery since our partnership began in 2011.
AN INTRODUCTION TO WINEMAKER AND THE WINES
(Our first visit recollections and all the rest.)
June 21, 2011. Strada Regina, Potenza Picina, Marches, Italy.
Out to greet me, today Aldo Cifola looks more like a fashionable statesman than dedicated fellow of wine. Yet if the little- 375-ml-sized- extraordinary super cru Verdicchio "di Matelica" had to have one: a statesman, Aldo's our man, statesman's hands down.
Signore Cifola is eminently like-able, combining an edgy emerging Dean Martin look, completed with the swagger of a boxer in his cross-hatched, two-toned-color shoes most likely sold in a downtown Milanese specialty footware shop needing a security code or fingerprint ID to gain access to.
Looks like Aldo's can deceive, oft times adding up to a gentleman largely removed from crucial aspects of great winemaking. For example, consider La Monacecsa's hands-on farming of its well-tended vineyards, or the detailed cellar care along the lines of fanaticism seeking perfection, along with a magnetic opposition to the latest journalistic fads geared to appeal to high points and quick-buck sales. In those equations, The Land, The Place, The Grape and The Ground are left behind like a '79 fiat spider on the Autostrada passed by a bumble bee yellow Maserati. Fashion aside, this shoemaker's son is headfirst fully engaged in every facet of the wines at La Monacesca. ...no, dear reader, a special vineyard micro-climate like the treasure chest of Matelica's hills is too valuable, too small and too precious a terroir to be overwhelmed by these concerns.
La Monacesca terroir.
E&R's QUEST FOR GREAT MATELICA:
WHY?
Two important reasons stand out beyond our love for discovering the best wines in France and Italy which led our curiosity to Matelica:
1- Verdicchio has two great and vastly different terroirs: Jesi and Matelica. We think each need representation.
2- There were no great Matelica wines currently available in Oregon.
We believe our "almost direct imports" work with Lucio at Coroncino provides an example as good as Verdicchio di Jesi gets. But we also wanted its counterculture cousin "Matelica" for the same reasons any self-respecting selection of white Burgundy must have wines from Chablis and from the Macon. Our two new La Monacesca Verdicchio wines represent the pinnacle of Matelica. We believe fans of the Coroncino Verdicchio will also be thrilled to taste these new Matelica wines.
VERDICCHIO 1:
SHANGHAIED BY FISH BOTTLES
No comment.
A sad but relevant legacy of Verdicchio is the infamous "fish" bottle that, like "hearty" Chablis, has tainted the reputation of what can measure up to the best whites in Italy. In the 1950's a few Jesi producers- as a tribute to original amphora-shaped wine vessels of the Etruscans- began bottling wine using the unique shape. As seafood is considered a quintessential match for more simple versions of Verdicchio, the amphora shape morphed into an ill-advised fish shape. Jeepers creepers, as Shakespeare's Polonius said "costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; for the apparel oft proclaims the wine".
Matelica and Jesi: cheese and chalk.
VERDICCHIO 2: JESI AND MATELICA
The rolling grounds of Verdicchio di Jesi's vineyards are warm-breeze, sea-influenced; and it's a temperate enclave for grapes, rabbits and humans (see map above). Though only a hour to the southwest, Verdicchio's Matelica chill-out may as well be some other country. Matelica's postage stamp 700 acres is a mere one tenth the size of Jesi, and at 1400 feet, dramatically higher than Jesi's close to sea level vines. The cooler Matelica slopes are dramatically influenced by the nearby, snow-capped Apennines providing its grapes a continental climate influence. The soil at Matelica is clay-based while Jesi's warmer hills are constituted with mostly sand, marinelife remains and gravel. Summing up the crucial flavor/style differences, Burgundy fans would consider the lovely Jesi Verdicchio from Lucio at Coroncino like a top Pouilly Fuisse while the new La Monacesca duo counter as a fine Chablis.
The little monastery.
LA MONACESCA OF MATELICA
If you were trodding Matelican footpaths a thousand years ago, you'd have passed the very spot above where a few local Benedictine monks had a stone-stacked chapel with rooms (no carpets, car parks, amex, visa or ac) in which, among other activities, they surreptitiously sopped up bread and unfiltered Verdicchio. Not a whole lot has changed since then, though Aldo has spruced up the environs, upgraded the monk's foundation and named his winery "la monacesca" as a kind of paean to the monastery and the chorus of sippers of previous times.
Though grapes flourished in the area for 2600 years, in 1966, the year Blonde On Blonde was released, Casimiro Cifola- Aldo's dad- said to the chapel and the hillside "I want you", and he purchased the whole place and planted Verdicchio. Their first commercial release was in 1973, and later in 1982, Aldo joined Casimiro, and years later took over the whole Verdicchian shebang.
La Monacesca's vines grow in a unique habitat bed- an ancient salt lake whose soil combines thin layers of sand amidst a dense clay base. The distinctive minerality and weight of Aldo's wines is derived from serious organic farming within the marine fossil-laden ground, the inland climate surrounded by mountains and the special soil nourishing the vines. All of La Monacesca's vines are from self-farmed clones in their own nursery. As Aldo explained to me "wine is the opposite of fashion, you cannot change the vineyard like a suit".
After more than thirty harvests he reflected on his life thus far saying "I was born in nearby Civitanova Marche, my father made shoes (!) and my grandfather sold produce riding his horse to meet buyers. Our story is not just of the winery but it is of the Marches. We find that Verdicchio is not understood, not its lovely class or its capacity here in Matelica to age. It is a not an aromatic grape, it is hard and closed when young. A distinction between a good wine and a great wine is equilibrium and its giving of pleasure."
Indeed, we agree and believe you will taste this in this premiere of his La Monacesca wines. The Matelica district has only eight independent producers and the local co-op accounts for over 30% of the total production. No wonder this tiny gem of an appellation remains more or less a secret in the USA.
(E)
Ciao Aldo!
Click on each wine for more detail.