Shall We Marche?

The first day of an autumn trip through one of Italy’s least known Provinces

Ristorante Nostrano in the city of Pesaro, Marche as rendered by the artist John Donohue

Le Marche is not usually the province on Americans’ minds when they decide to make a trip to Italy. Tucked away on the Adriatic Coast just south of the statelet of San Marino, its capital, Ancona, has in the past been mostly a way station for tourists en route to Croatia. Its wines, most notably its Verdicchios, were, back in the 70s and 80s, kitschily dressed up in bottles that evoked a fish or the female form.

But something is stirring in Le Marche. A new direct train from Milan means that it’s not hard to find your way to the province’s mountains, coasts, valleys and vineyards. And on arriving you quickly learn that it’s a place so diverse, that even the language itself varies widely from town to town. Listen for example to these three words for “baby” in three different Marche towns:

https://youtu.be/uRhqgVjPbp8

Because things are changing and, because, well, who doesn’t want to explore a new province of Italy? I’ve come here this week with the illustrator John Donohue and the food and wine journalist Betsy Andrews to see what’s happening here in this undiscovered country. John will be drawing restaurants and scenes (as he did above in our opening dinner at the restaurant Nostrano) and Betsy will be helping…