Blog: Marche | Wine region

The vineyards
A winery stands and falls with the quality of its vineyards, plus the skillful craftsmanship in the vineyard and cellar. The winery of Domenico and Simone Capecci is located in San Savino, the core zone of Rosso Piceno and in the middle of one of the best sites of the entire region. For a long time, the young winemaker Simone wondered whether it would be possible to lease some very good sites first and then perhaps buy them later. The question was whether it would really be possible to secure good vineyards. In several years of detailed work, it was possible to expand the vineyard by a few, but very high quality and old vineyards. Today the Azienda Agricola San Savino covers 35 hectares. The now strong reduction in yields provides a great surprise in the cellar, because most of the wine barrels, especially those with large contents, remain consistently empty. The turn to class succeeded in the last fifteen years, long before other wineries in the zone began to do so.

The Rosso Piceno
The classic red wine of the area here is called Rosso Piceno Superiore DOC, where Superiore here stands for the otherwise usual term 'Classico'. The main grape varieties are the high quality Adriatic Montepulciano and Sangiovese. The two grape varieties are used in Rosso Piceno as a variable cuvee. The blending ratio of the two grape varieties results in very interesting wines, with the more powerful Montepulciano tending to dominate. This high proportion of Montepulciano (up to 70%) results in extremely complex, expressive and extremely long-lived wines. The use of new wooden barrels of Slavonian oak (1500 L) and French barriques (225 L), proved useful.

It should also be noted that with the rediscovery and reclamation of the ancient grape variety Pecorino, a remedy was found against the wine monotony. Simone Capecci has accepted the idiosyncrasy of this ancient mountain grape variety, creating a truly great white wine of the Marche.

Quality - not marketing
It is important to know that the southern Marches were only released from the 'Mezzadria' by law in 1962. The 'mezzadria' is the medieval form of half-lease, whereby peasants farmed the lands for the resident nobility. The peasants had a right of first refusal for these lands. Those who could afford to buy were dependent on the cooperatives as buyers for their grapes, as there were very few direct marketing opportunities at the time. After some time it was clear to the Capeccis that this was the wrong way for their grapes. Around 1980, there were the first attempts at bottling wines on the farm.

The road to today's wines was long and always accompanied by enormous changes in the vineyards as well as in the cellar. There was no longer a demand for the masses common to the cooperatives, but for quality. The use of technology remains within narrow limits to this day, the focus is on the craft. After a long and intense discussion, all the old wooden barrels were removed from the cellar and replaced with new wood. The first barrique barrels were purchased in the joint project and the intensive discussion about wood and wine began. - Gerardo [TS05/23]