Maceratino - Colli Maceratesi, Marche, Italy

What the heck is Maceratino?  The more I researched this grape, the more I found myself asking that particular question.  There are a lot of suggestions out there for what Maceratino could be, but very few answers as to what it really is.  I did a little bit of digging and found some interesting stuff in the scientific literature that may help to shed a little light on the situation.

A lot of the confusion with Maceratino has to do with synonyms.  Maceratino has 21 synonyms listed in the VIVC, and, confusingly, eight of those synonyms include the word Greco while four include the word Verdicchio.  Many sources (including the OCW, Wikipedia and this Italian source) indicate that there may be some kind of relationship between Maceratino and Greco and/or Verdicchio, and some of them use the overlapping synonyms as an argument for that.  There are some ampelographic similarities between the vines that has led to the grapes sharing some synonyms, but it hasn't ever really been clear whether there's a serious genetic relationship between Maceratino, Greco and/or Verdicchio.  While I didn't find any studies that answered the question directly, I think I was able to find some answers by linking the findings from a few different studies together.

Before taking a look at Maceratino, I first wanted to take a look at the relationship between Greco and Verdicchio.  The OCW indicates that Maceratino could be related to either Greco or Verdicchio, but Wikipedia indicated that it was related to both, which naturally implies some sort of relationship between Greco and Verdicchio themselves.  The Wikipedia article on Verdicchio makes this a bit more explicit, as they say that with Verdicchio, there "appears to be a genetic relation to Trebbiano and the Grecogrape varieties."  We explored the relationship between Trebbiano and Verdicchio in the post on Turbiana, but this was the first that I had heard about an alleged relationship between Verdicchio and Greco.  The source for this claim is Bastianich and Lynch's Vino Italiano, which refers to Greco as a family of grapes with the Umbrian Grechetto as a subvariety and the Sicilian Grecanico as either a synonym for Greco proper or merely an offshoot of the family.  The authors further maintain that "greco may well have been the progenitor of most of the white varieties in Italy, including trebbiano, verdicchio, and the garganega of Soave in the Veneto," according to "some historians and scientists."

I took a look at a paper that I used for researching my Turbiana post, and pretty much all of the evidence that I needed was right there.  The authors of this paper didn't test Maceratino, but they did test Greco Bianco and Verdicchio and found that there was only 20% similarity between the two cultivars genetically, meaning that if they were related to one another, it would be very distantly.  Furthermore, Grechetto and Grecanico themselves had a similarity rating of 20% between them and both had a similarity rating of about 10% to Greco and Verdicchio, meaning that there isn't any really good reason to believe that these four grapes are closely related to one another at all.

So now that we know that Greco and Verdicchio aren't related to one another, we also know that if Maceratino is related to either of them, it can really only be related to one and not to both.  Maceratino isn't a very common grape and I wasn't sure if I could find a study with any genetic information on it, but, fortunately, I not only found one, but I found one that also tested Verdicchio as well (citation below).  This study was designed to test the discriminatory power of various microsatellite sites, which means basically that they were testing to see which areas of DNA differed the most across various grape varieties, so that those sites could be targeted in future studies.  The results indicated that Verdicchio and Maceratino matched exactly at three sites, matched for one allele at two other sites and didn't match at all on the sixth site.  This means that the two grapes are definitely distinct cultivars and are not a parent-offspring match, but there could be a more distant but still relatively close familial relationship between them.  The similarity of Maceratino to Verdicchio also means that it is very unlikely that Maceratino is related to Greco Bianco.

Geographically, this makes a lot of sense.  Verdicchio is thought to be native to the Marche region of Italy, where Maceratino is also found.  The name Maceratino doesn't have anything to with the word "maceration," but rather with the fact that the grape is thought to be from the town of Macerata in the Marche (though two of its other synonyms, Montecchiesse, meaning from Montecchio, and Matelicano, meaning from Matelica indicate that this bit of information isn't necessarily 100% controversy-free either).  Most Italian sources indicate that it has been grown in the Marche for hundreds of years, but plantings have been falling recently.   The reasons for its decline aren't 100% clear, as the vine yields generously and is relatively hardy in the vineyard while still producing quality wine.  This is usually the recipe for increased plantings, but some believe that Verdicchio's commercial success in international markets has led to many producers tearing up vines in order to plant more Verdicchio to meet consumer demand.  Most of the Maceratino that is still grown is found in the Colli Maceratesi DOC, where the white wines must be at least 85% Maceratino.

I was able to pick up a bottle of the 2009 Andrea Baccius La Murola Q Maceratino from my friends at Curtis Liquors for about $10.  In the glass the wine was a pale silvery lemon color with greenish tints.  The nose was moderately intense with green apple, pear and lime citrus aromas.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  Right out of the bottle the wine was bright and zippy with pineapple, lime and green apple fruits.  As it opens up, the flavor palette gets a little broader with some white peach fruits and a bit of chalky minerality.  I much preferred it early in the evening when it was tart and refreshing, but I found that I liked it less and less as the night wore on.  It does represent a very nice value at only $10 and is versatile enough to complement a wide variety of foods.  I would definitely recommend giving it a shot if you run across it, as it seems to be getting harder and harder to find.

CITATION

Filippetti, I., Silvestroni, O., Thomas, M.R., and Intrieri, C.  2001.  Genetic characterisation of Italian wine grape cultivars by microsatellite analysis.  Acta Horta. 546.  pp. 395-399.

Grechetto - Umbria, Italy

I mentioned in my last post that I occasionally am able to learn some interesting things just by entering the name of the the grape I'm trying to research into a Google image search.  Today, for example, I learned that there was a 17th Century Italian painter named Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione who was known as Il Grechetto, according to Wikipedia, because of the "classic air of his pastoral depictions," whatever that means.  Those of you up on your Art History may also know that there was a Spanish painter known as El Greco, who, it turns out, died when Castiglione was about five years old.  El Greco's real name was Doménikos Theotokópoulos, which, as you can tell, is definitely not a Spanish name, so no prizes for guessing where his nickname came from.  He signed many of his paintings Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος, which is his name in Greek script.


None of which really has anything to with wine grapes.  The only similarity that the grapes have with the painters is that, like El Greco and Il Grechetto, the Greco and Grechetto grapes are not related to one another at all. Many people believe that the Grechetto and Greco grapes must be related to one another given the similarity of their names, but it doesn't look like that's the case (or if it is, no one has stepped forward with any proof).  The similarity of their names is due to the fact that both grapes are thought to have originated in Greece and been brought over to Italy at some point in the fairly distant past, though I've not yet seen any evidence to support this claim.  I've looked for studies linking either of these grapes to grapes currently grown in Greece and haven't been able to come up with anything.  Today Greco is mostly found in southern Italy around Campania while Grechetto makes its home a little farther north in Umbria with some plantings in Lazio and Tuscany.

There seems to be two distinct subvarieties of Grechetto: Grechetto di Todi and Grechetto Spoletino.  Grechetto di Todi seems to be the more widely grown of the two and has its own DOC within the Colli Martani region of Umbria, just southwest of Montefalco.  Grechetto has traditionally been known as a blending grape and is perhaps best known for its occasional appearance in the wines of Orvieto in western Umbria.  Grechetto can account for up to only 45% of the blend for Orvieto while Trebbiano (here called Procanico) must account for 40-60% and a grape called Verdello (which may or may not be the same as the Portuguese Verdelho) must account for 15-25%.  There is no minimum requirement for Grechetto, and some producers don't use any in their wines.  As the grape's penchant for making quality wine becomes more recognized, though, more producers are using as much Grechetto as they can.  There are a few other DOC areas that allow for a high percentage of Grechetto, but most of the varietal Grechetto's that I've seen end up being bottled under the Umbria IGT designation since most of the DOC wines only allow for a maximum of 85% Grechetto.  Producers interested in making a 100% Grechetto have no option other than the Umbria IGT designation.  The grape is also widely used in late harvest dessert wines and Vin Santo production because it has especially thick skins that are better able to survive the extra time on the vine without succumbing to fungal infections.  

I was able to find two different wines made from the Grechetto grape.  The first was the 2007 Argillae Grechetto from Umbria which I picked up from my friends at Curtis Liquors for about $18.  In the glass, this wine was a medium golden lemon color.  The nose was fairly intense with aromas of buttery nuts, ripe red apples and lemony citrus.  It smelled a little oaky and a little leesy, but both aromas were pretty well integrated.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with medium acidity.  There were flavors of ripe apple and pear with a touch of lemon.  There was also a faint nuttiness and a distinct dairy-ish, cheesy kind of funk to it.  I would have guessed that this wine saw some oak at some point, but the winery's website makes no mention of it.  The wine has definitely undergone malolactic fermentation, which is why the acid seemed kind of blunted here and why there was a distinctive dairy note.  This wine was probably little past its prime and made in a style that I don't naturally gravitate towards, so it's hard for me to recommend it.  It's not exactly a bargain at nearly $20 a bottle, but fans of moderately oaked Chardonnay may find a lot to like here.

The second wine that I tried was the 2010 San Clemente "Verdeaura" Grechetto from Umbria.  This wine came to me from Paul Turina, an importer located in Portland, Maine, who stopped by my house last week to drop a few samples off.  I'll be profiling Paul and some of his selection in greater detail a bit later this week.  As always, what follows is my honest impression of the wine I tasted.  I have not been compensated in any way other than with the sample bottle and do not have any commercial association with Turina Italian Wines or any of its partners.  In the glass this wine was a very pale silver which was as close to water white as I've ever seen in a wine.  The nose was fairly intense with peach, pineapple, lemon and green apple fruits.  It was really a delightful wine to smell.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were juicy, ripe peach and pineapple flavors with pink grapefruit and lime citrus with a hint of stony minerality on the finish.  Paul tells me he gets something a little buttery out of this wine and enjoys it with lobster.  I'd drink this with just about anything as I thought it was an exceptional wine that was intensely flavored but very well balanced.  It was honestly one of the better white wines I've had in some time, which came as a real surprise to me since I've never been a big fan of Orvieto and didn't care much for the Argillae above.  If any distributors are reading this, Paul is looking for representation outside of the state of Maine so please contact him through his website so that more people can experience this wine and some of the others in his portfolio.  I'll be reviewing a Sagrantino from this same producer later this week so be sure to stay tuned for that.