Verdicchio - especially when its name is enhanced with the words “classico” and “superiore” - is one of Italy’s most reliable white wines, dry and firmly structured, with enough flavour to make it interesting.
Most supermarkets stock it in one form or another, in good enough versions to make this product of the Adriatic coast seem a safe buy.
Sipped in a Pesaro restaurant, sometimes under a posher name, it seems the nicest of drinks, the perfect representative of the seaside university town where the composer Rossini was born.
Though now sold mostly in conventionally shaped bottles, it used to be visually identified by the tall, curvaceous amphora bottles in which it was traditionally supplied. Today this is something people have come to associate with poorer-quality Verdicchio, but Sainsbury’s current version, a 2014 “Taste the Difference” classico, though not a superiore, costing £8, is unapologetically in an amphora bottle and is not to be despised because of that.
Although not markedly better than Waitrose’s 2014 Verdicchio Classico (in an ordinary bottle) at £5.99, it is fresh, thoroughly quaffable and certainly preferable to an average supermarket Pinot Grigio.
A more uncommon Italian white is a Grillo from Sicily, a happy specimen of which is being supplied online by Naked Wines of Norfolk at a not excessive £7.99 per bottle. Slightly stronger than the Sainsbury Verdicchio, this vivacious wine has a bit of bite and can be served as an admirable aperitif.
28 July 2015
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