Cantine aperte a maggio 2010 – Open house at wine producers – 2010 – The Marche

The “Cantine aperte” last weekend was a cool experience, during 2 days you could tour wine producers, their cantine, all over the country and taste a lot of excellent wines. We went to the Marche, and started with Brunori (www.brunori.it) in San Paolo di Jesi, which is a family owned business that produces around 14 000 bottles of wine per year. The owner himself took us on a tour of the site and then they had hired a sommelier who guided you through the tasting of their different wines. The sommelier was a local who, in the distinct "singing" marchegiano accent, talked about the last years San Nicoló, Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi DOC and the red wines Torquis Rosso Piceno DOC, Alborada Lacrima di Morro d’Alba and Barco Rosso Conero DOC.

Another of the more fun places we went to was a wine producer in Barchi close to Pesaro, called Valentino Fiorino (www.fiorinowines.it) . They had organized the whole event in their back yard and garden, also having a band playing chill out music while you could taste and buy their different wines. The place was very crowded! Fiorino was a completely unknown wine producer to me, but their wines were pretty great, a sort of hidden treasure on the countryside outside Pesaro! They produce a very good “spumante” and their red wines are excellent, the Bartis (Colli Pesaresi Sangiovese DOC) is a bit more full-bodied wine while the Sirio (Colli Pesaresi Sangiovese DOC) goes down like it was coca cola or something like that…

Have you toured any wine producers last weekend? What were your experiences and where did you go?

To go over to the food question, we went to Pongettis one of the evenings which is to be one f the classic fish restaurants in Senigallia. But it was a bad experience, as the staff was rude, it took them 45 minutes to prepare a small plate of cold fish appetizers!! We had to remind them several times and in the end they even responded us in a not very polite manner…The food in itself was nothing spectacular, the starters are overpriced and the main dish was all right but nothing special.

On the Sunday evening we went to La Sangiovesa in Sant’Arcangelo in Romagna, where the salsiccia (sausages) is very good and also the different pasta dishes are valid. A characteristic place, perhaps a bit touristic, but definitely a restaurant to try out!