rosso piceno
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The Marches were part of a territory that extended inland along the eastern bank of the Tiber River and up north all the way to the Po Valley. The Umbri and the Picentes occupied the area during early Paleolithic times. Colonized and organized by the Romans in the 3rd century B.C., the area was invaded by the Goths after the fall of the Roman Empire. In the 6th century, the northern part of today’s Marches came under Byzantine rule.
In the 8th century, the region was donated to the papacy in two steps, first by Pepin the Short, the first Carolingian king of the Franks, in 754 and then by his son Charlemagne in 774. Today’s region reaches from the eastern slopes of the Apennines to the Adriatic Sea.
The area, bounded by Ancona in the north, and Ascoli Piceno in the south, has produced wines for millennia. Polybius wrote that Hannibal had his cavalry units’ horses rubbed down with the red wine of Picenum to give them new vigor. Today’s Rosso Piceno is an aromatic, sleek wine made largely from Sangiovese, and Montepulciano.
Two distinct cuisines have evolved in Le Marche, as they have in other regions along the Adriatic: a coastal cuisine based on fish and vegetables, and an inland cuisine based on pork and mushrooms. The tremendous variety of fish, shellfish (including Lobster, which is unknown elsewhere in Italy), vegetables and herbs has produced hundreds of simple dishes whose intent is to highlight the immediacy and freshness of these ingredients: Brodetto marchigiano (fish stew with white wine and saffron) and muscioli alla marinara (steamed mussels dressed with olive oil, herbs and lemon). Pig is king in the foothills of the Apennines and mushrooms are hunted from April to December. Porchetta (suckling pig), sausages, salami and local prosciutti abound.