in Matelica -- SUSTAINABLE
FUSO is our kind of daily drinker: affordable, natural, everyday-delicious wine, from interesting growing areas and grapes (read: no Pinot Grigio or Merlot).
Sometimes, wine's taken way too seriously; it must give spiritual healing, be sexy, offer a forced epiphany ,and, give airs of luxury while being low-cost. Or, to continue the gentle tirade, we need to dumb ourselves down to accept mass-produced wine with furry little creatures on labels. Geez! why not celebrate delicious wines with no pretense? Don't get me wrong, there's a place for great wines, or obscure and special wines, but there's also a place for genuine daily drinkers that have some character. I'm mean aren't you just thirsty sometimes? Don't you deserve more than swill for that need?
How? We've put NASA and a group of Roman graffiti artists in a room together and out came: the FUSO label. What' inside is wine from top-notch producers that they usually only offer to locals. We got some cool stuff: Barbera from Walter Massa in the Colli Tortonesi in Piemonte (roasted cran-raspberry and minerals; no oak). For a white, we chose the amazing variety Verdicchio from the little known DOC of Matelica in Le Marche region; it's produced by the quality cooperative Belisario (think Alto Adige level of quality but not price); green apple, tangerine with a little tingle and some mineralality; again, no oak.
Why FUSO, as a name?
It's a play on two Italian words: sfuso and fuso:
Sfuso: a noun for the everyday drinking wine you'll find on tables here in Italy, more of an osteria or pizzeria than ristorante style of wine; fresh and delicious, vinified in steel, and made to drink in the first few years.
Fuso: an adjective that describes a person feeling “out of it,” or, “a little confused."
FUSO brings a little, happy, momentary order to life's daily confusion.
FUSO -- Verdicchio di Matelica Cantina Belisario
An unnamed case-movin' client, living outside of all of those cool hipster areas in the US, came up to us at a party and asked to try the FUSO Verdicchio we were pouring. He loved the wine and wanted it to replace his Pinot Grigio on the list that had been there since the song Margaritaville first came out. Yet, and this is a big 'Yet,' he asked us to replace the name of Verdicchio with Pinot Grigio! Are you for real man?! It's Verdicchio! Verde-green-apple-verve-Verdicchio! Love it or hate it but don't lie to it. Some days I wish we could sell heaps of Pinot Grigio so I could buy all my friends cases of Verdicchio to age in their make-shift cellars. But oh! the temptation of cheap Pinot Grigio will not bring me to the dark side.
Verdicchio isn't just one of those many, what I call, 'cute' varieties in Italy; it's a contender for what could be called a serious variety: it ages, has poised fruit, and is very unique, but also easy to like (move over too-easy too like P Grey boy). The Matelica DOC, instead of Jesi, is grown on a raised ancient sea bed, with lots of fossils and chalk vineyards; it the insider's Verdicchio, even if the area is substantially smaller than the Jesi. The Verdicchio of Matelica DOC,in general, has less fruit, more minerals, and more piercing aromotics, than found in neighboring Jesi DOC.
The Matelica DOC is within the literally ‘High Valley of Esino,’ Alta Valle d’Esino, starting at the relatively high at base city of Matelica at 354 meters. The valley came about by the formation of an ancient seabed being raised 4 million years ago during the Pliocene period. With the Apennines flanking high on the sides, the valley, unique for the region, runs North-South. This protection causes extreme day/night temperature fluctuations, better aromatics, with more zip to the acidity, than found, for example in neighboring Jesi (though Verdiccio grown in either Matelica or Jesi, for it’s such a wonderful variety in both places).
Back to the raised sea bed valley of Matelica, though: its hills of clay and sand have become rounded with time and they roll gentle into the Apennines; it’s where the hills and incisive beginning of the Apennines meet, at a higher altitude of 300-500 meters, that there’s also chalk found in the clay and sand. Those are on the eastern side of the river, Esino, and the wine tend to be offer more mineral poise than fruit.
We are working on getting them to screw caps -- fingers crossed.
