Terre Cortesi Moncaro was the largest wine cooperative in the Marche region, founded in 1964 in Montecarotto. It counted 612 member growers farming 1,300 hectares and produced about 10 million bottles a year, roughly 40 percent of which were exported. It employed 58 people and was a dominant force in the Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi denomination, one of Italy's most recognised white wine appellations.
The crisis built over 2023 and broke in February 2024, when the board ousted historic president Doriano Marchetti, who had led the cooperative for 25 years. Donatella Manetti took over and faced the scale of the damage: about €25 million in debt to banks and suppliers, employees unpaid, and an €8.75 million acquisition — Villa Medoro in Abruzzo — that strained finances further. A downy mildew epidemic in 2023 devastated the harvest across central Italy, compounding the shortfall.
In August 2024 the cooperative entered a concordato preventivo — a preventive arrangement, Italy's form of bankruptcy protection. The court appointed Marcello Pollio as judicial commissioner to oversee creditor negotiations. The Istituto Marchigiano di Tutela Vini (IMT) stepped in with a storage measure for Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi, limiting yields and blocking up to 30 quintals per hectare until June 2025, to protect the denomination's value from a flood of bulk wine if Moncaro's creditors forced a fire sale.
The crisis sent a shock through the Verdicchio denomination. Producers feared that distressed bulk wine from Moncaro's cellars would collapse prices for everyone. The cooperative's troubles were described as structural — the product of rising energy and glass costs, a bad harvest, and an acquisition that proved too large for a cooperative balance sheet.
The €8.75M Villa Medoro acquisition left no buffer for a 2023 crop failure, so the cooperative sought concordato preventivo, with IMT limiting yields.
The €8.75 million acquisition of Villa Medoro in Abruzzo stretched a cooperative balance sheet already carrying rising production costs, leaving no buffer for a bad harvest
Downy mildew in 2023 slashed the central Italian harvest, cutting the revenue that the cooperative depended on to service its debt
Energy and glass prices rose sharply after 2022, compressing margins on a product that competes on price rather than exclusivity
The board changed leadership only after the debt had reached €25 million and employees had gone unpaid, by which point the options for an out-of-court resolution were exhausted
A cooperative has no equity buffer. When it spends millions on an acquisition, it bets on the harvest. If the crop fails when debt comes due, the only way is bankruptcy protection.
Judicial commissioner Marcello Pollio began negotiations with creditors under the concordato preventivo. The IMT's storage measure prevented distressed inventory from flooding the Verdicchio market until June 2025, but the measure was a stopgap, not a cure. The cooperative's 612 member growers and 58 employees faced an uncertain season, and the reputation of Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi as a denomination was damaged by association. Producers from other Marche wineries described the crisis as 'a damage for the whole territory.'
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