Winemaker: Andrea Polidoro
Where: Sibillini Mountains, Marche, Italy
Size: Approx. 1,7 ha
Main Varieties: Trebbiano, Malvasia Bianca di Candia, Verdicchio, Maceratino, Santa Maria, Sangiovese and Montepulciano
Viticulture: Organic Certified – wild trained
Quick note: Andrea works with viti maritate – old vineyards with vines growing on or ‘married to’ maple trees, and heritage varieties, some ungrafted, mostly pre 1970.
Contrada Contro is Andrea Polidoro’s project in the foothills of the Monti Sibillini, between Gualdo and Sarnano in the Marche. Andrea’s route into wine was not the conventional one. After studying Political Science and International Relations, he moved to Bordeaux, where he spent three years and began working with wine. It was here that he met Ornella Tondini and Lionel Cousin of Cupano, an encounter that eventually brought him to Montalcino. Since 2017 he has gradually taken over the technical direction of Cupano and today works as the estate’s winemaker – an important part of his background and experience before starting his own project in the Marche.
The idea for Contrada Contro began in 2019, when Andrea returned to the area his grandfather Sante came from to discover the region of the Sibillini Mountains. There he came across old viti maritate that had been abandoned for decades – vines growing on or ‘married to’ maple trees, an ancient system of cultivation that was once widespread throughout this part of central Italy. In March 2020 he began bringing them back into production, before taking over his first old co-planted vineyard for Contrada Contro.
With a great response on the first vintage, Andrea gained confidence to start the recovery of a small collection of old vineyards scattered through the hills of the Sibillini. Many were planted in the 1960s and 70s, while some of the surviving viti maritate are considerably older and remain ungrafted. Andrea works primarily with the traditional varieties of the area – Trebbiano, Malvasia Bianca di Candia, Verdicchio, Maceratino and Santa Maria, alongside Sangiovese and Montepulciano for the reds.
Each vineyard is treated as its own place. Rather than separating the old field blends into individual varieties, Andrea generally preserves the vineyards as they were planted and names the wines after the individual contrada in which they grow. It is a simple idea, but an important part of the project: maintaining the identity of these old vineyards rather than reshaping them into something more conventional.
The soils are extremely rich in limestone and composed largely of sand and silt. Andrea describes his aim from the beginning as making wines of tension and verticality – a philosophy that is very clear in the glass. Farming is organic, fermentations are spontaneous, and ageing takes place predominantly in used wood and ceramic vessels. The wines are kept on the lees for as long as possible, and are bottled without filtration, and minimum sulphur.
The result is a very particular expression of Marche. These are not broad or heavy Mediterranean wines, but wines driven by freshness, structure and energy. There is concentration, but also a distinctly saline, mineral line running through them, with herbal notes and an almost citric acidity giving the whites remarkable length and precision.
What makes Contrada Contro especially interesting is that the project never feels old-fashioned. Andrea is recovering an almost forgotten way of farming, but the wines themselves feel completely contemporary – clean, energetic and precise, with very little standing between the vineyard and the finished wine. This is both a preservation project and one of the more exciting new expressions of white wine coming from central Italy.
