Marchetti

Maurizio Marchetti enjoys a fairly fantastic, charmed life. He lives near the Adriatic coast of Italy in a region that sees nearly 3000 hours (200 days) of sun each year. Also, his wife is a cardiologist (so she brings home the pancetta, as we like to say), leaving Maurizio free to pursue his two art forms: painting and making wine. (You may notice looking at his Verdicchio bottle that Botticelli is his favorite influence.) Because he needn’t rely on wine to earn an income, Marchetti can afford to be as picky with his grapes as he wants. Maurizio is so selective, in fact, that he sometimes produces as little as a half-bottle of wine per plant! To that end, he uses a special pneumatic press for a single, extremely light press, called a “flower press”. Or, as Maurizio says with a nudge and a wink, “Butterflies crush my grapes as they fly by with their wings.”

Note: Maurizio’s great, great grandfather was an exotic spice trader, sailing to the Far East over 250 years ago. He was quite successful, allowing the family to buy the land that is now the Marchetti estate. On their property, they have a castellino (‘little castle’)  whose interior walls have murals of Chinese sailors loading ships with the cinnamon, cumin, and paprika that were so highly prized in his day.