From the atlas
Tenuta Di Tavignano
At A Glance
Producer: Tenuta di Tavignano Region: Marche, Italy Appellation: Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi DOC Classico Superiore Key Grape: Verdicchio Farming: Certified organic since 2018 Listed wine: Misco, single-vineyard Verdicchio from three hectares
The Producer
Tenuta di Tavignano makes its argument through a single grape on a hilltop nobody expected to matter. The estate sits at Località Tavignano in Cingoli, a town in the province of Macerata in the Marche region of central Italy, and its case rests on Verdicchio: a white variety that the broader wine market long filed under fresh and inexpensive and which Tavignano has spent two decades showing can do something else entirely.
Stefano Aymerich di Laconi and Beatrice Lucangeli founded the estate. Its 230 hectares include 30 planted to vine, growing Verdicchio, Montepulciano, Sangiovese and other native varieties. Ondine de la Feld Aymerich, a member of the succeeding family generation, became CEO in 2021. Misco is a single-vineyard Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico Superiore drawn from three hectares of the estate's finest Verdicchio parcel.
Place
Cingoli sits on a ridge in the Macerata hills, and that elevation is the first thing that shapes what Tavignano's Verdicchio tastes like. The estate receives breezes from two directions: off the Adriatic to the east and down from the Apennines to the west. The meeting of those air currents extends the growing season, slows ripening and keeps acidity alive in the grapes through summer heat.
The vineyard layout follows the terrain and its relationship to the sea. Verdicchio, the white variety and the estate's priority, grows on the estate side of the property, sheltered and higher. Montepulciano and Sangiovese occupy vineyards closer to the Adriatic, where warmer conditions push the red varieties toward riper, darker fruit. On the label, the address is Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi DOC Classico Superiore: the Classico zone covers the historic core of the appellation, the hillside parishes around Jesi where the variety has been grown longest and where the soils and altitude give the wine its characteristic spine.
Soil And Site
The Misco parcel covers three hectares of the estate's best Verdicchio ground. The Cingoli hills are calcareous clay, a combination that holds moisture through dry summers and gives the vine enough stress to concentrate flavour without shutting down. That same mineral base shows in the wine: Verdicchio from this zone tends toward citrus and white fruit with a chalky, saline quality on the finish, less a matter of oak or winemaking choice than of what the soil and the dual-breeze microclimate do to the grape over a long growing season.
Story
For most of its history, Tavignano was a working agricultural estate, not a wine estate. Until the 1990s, its income came from cereals, vegetables and fodder crops. The turn toward native wine varieties was a deliberate pivot, one that required replanting, rethinking the cellar and identifying which grapes the land actually suited.
The first major cellar decision came in 2005, when the modern white-wine facility was rebuilt from scratch. The solution was architectural: underground steel vessels, dug into the hillside, where the natural temperature is stable and cool year-round. The logic was specific to Verdicchio, a variety that can lose freshness and gain premature weight if aged at room temperature in oak. Underground steel gave the cellar team control without adding flavour.
A decade later, Ondine de la Feld Aymerich joined the administration in 2014, the same year the estate began converting all its vineyards and olive groves to organic farming. Four years of conversion work completed in 2018, when organic certification appeared on the label. Current practices use organic fertilisation and green manure; defensive interventions in the vineyard happen only when the team considers them unavoidable. The overlapping arrival of a new family leader and the beginning of the environmental programme was not coincidental. The two changes moved together.
Vineyards And Cellar
Organic management across 30 hectares shapes the vine's relationship with the soil. Green manure between rows feeds microbial life rather than the vine directly, pushing roots deeper toward the calcareous subsoil. That soil contact shows in the wine as mineral definition rather than fruit weight.
In the modern cellar, Misco ferments in stainless steel and rests on fine lees before bottling. The length of that lees contact varies by vintage; the producer has used both a six-month programme and longer ageing in different years, adjusting to what the fruit needs. What stays constant is the absence of oak: the underground vessels maintain cool, stable conditions throughout, and the wine picks up its texture from the lees rather than from wood. The producer says Misco can be kept in the cellar for over ten years.
Red wines follow a different path. Montepulciano and Sangiovese age in French oak barriques and large Slavonian oak barrels held in the manor-house cellar, a separate building from the white-wine facility. The two cellars reflect the two arguments the estate is making: one about freshness preserved without wood, the other about oak ageing.
Wines
Verdicchio is the estate's main focus and the vine around which the range is organised. Misco sits at the top: a single-vineyard Classico Superiore, 100% Verdicchio, drawn exclusively from the three-hectare Misco parcel. It typically ferments and ages in underground stainless steel on fine lees, a process that builds texture and length without oak character. The wine carries citrus, white peach and a saline mineral note across the palate, with bright acidity and a firm, dry finish. It is built to age as well as to drink young, and the estate claims more than a decade of development potential in good vintages.
Below Misco, the estate produces wines from Verdicchio and from its red varieties under the Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi and broader Marche appellations. The Montepulciano and Sangiovese bottlings, aged in oak in the manor-house cellar, tend toward darker fruit, firmer tannin and more body than the white wines, with the barrique ageing adding vanilla and spice to what is already a thicker-skinned variety.
In The Glass
Verdicchio from Misco opens with citrus peel and white stone fruit, a combination that is direct and precise without being sharp. On the palate the lees contact adds a creamy weight to the mid-palate, softening the acidity without eliminating it. The finish is dry, with a saline, faintly bitter quality that is characteristic of the variety and of this appellation in particular: Verdicchio traditionally closes with an almond-skin note, and Misco carries it cleanly. The wine is not heavy; the underground steel ageing keeps it fresh and linear, and that freshness is what lets it develop over years rather than months. A bottle opened at three years shows different citrus than the same bottle at eight.
A Bottle To Understand It
Misco Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico Superiore is the bottle to start with. It is 100% Verdicchio from three hectares of a single named parcel in Cingoli, aged in underground steel on fine lees without oak contact. In the glass it gives citrus, white peach, a saline finish and the slightly bitter almond close that marks good Classico Superiore. The acidity is bright and integrated, and the mid-palate has enough lees-derived texture to feel complete rather than lean. It works now, and it develops over a decade.
Anecdote
In 2017, Gambero Rosso announced the best Italian white wine of the year. The winner was Misco 2015: 100% Verdicchio from three hectares of a hilltop estate in Cingoli, a town that does not appear in most wine itineraries. Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi had spent decades building a reputation as a reliable, fresh, moderately priced white for restaurants and everyday tables. A national best-white title changed the category of the conversation. When the announcement came through, Tavignano had already been farming organically for three years and had been working with its underground steel cellar for more than a decade. The 2017 award went to Misco 2015.
Final Word
Tavignano spent the 1990s leaving agriculture behind and the 2000s figuring out what its land was actually for. The answers accumulated in a specific order: underground steel for Verdicchio in 2005, organic conversion from 2014, a national white wine title in 2017. Misco is the physical form those answers take. For anyone curious about what Verdicchio can do at altitude, away from bulk production and oak, this is where to look.
Sources
- https://tenutaditavignano.it/en/the-estate/
- https://tenutaditavignano.it/en/sustainability/
- https://www.skurnik.com/producer/tenuta-di-tavignano/
- https://tenutaditavignano.it/en/product/misco-verdicchio-dei-castelli-di-jesi-doc-classico-superiore/
- https://www.skurnik.com/sku/verdicchio-castelli-di-jesi-classico-misco-tavignano-3/