The Marche’s indigenous Verdicchio is perhaps better known through the Castelli de Jesi denomination and its breezy seaside versions of the variety, but it is inland from the Adriatic, in commune of Matelica, where Verdicchio reaches its apex of complexity. Nestled among the Apennines, Verdicchio di Matelica—comprising a mere 1/10 th of the planted surface area of Castelli di Jesi—is a mountain wine par excellence, offering at its best a combination of bracing acidity, tight-grained mineral structure, and remarkable focus. And no greater expressions of Verdicchio di Matelica exist than those of Sergio Marani, a dyed-in-the-wool artisan who wholeheartedly embraces the variety’s age-worthy intensity.

Sergio’s great-grandfather set up shop in Matelica in the late 1920s, growing grapes and other crops, and tending the oxen which formed the labor force for central Italy’s burgeoning railroad system. The family acquired their present-day property in the late 1960s, encompassing the house, the 300-year-old cellar, and 10 hectares of rolling hillsides upon which they planted the indigenous Verdicchio. Most of those vines are still producing fruit today, fruit which is vinified and aged in the very same barrels—large 15-hectoliter casks made from local Apennine wood—with which the Maranis outfitted their cellar at the winery’s inception. Few producers anywhere are fortunate enough to claim such a through-line, and this constancy manifests clearly in the self-assured spirit of Marani’s wines.