Cupramontana · IT

Museo Internazionale dell'Etichetta del Vino - Musei in Grotta

Tucked beneath an 18th-century monastery in the Marche hill town of Cupramontana, the Museo Internazionale dell'Etichetta del Vino (International Wine Label Museum) turns a small piece of paper into a full-blown story of art, commerce and community. It is part of the MIG – Musei in Grotta complex, a cluster of exhibition spaces opened in 2016 inside the cellars, tunnels and caves of the old Monastery of Santa Caterina, carved into the local sandstone. The label museum itself is described as unique of its kind in Europe. Cupramontana calls itself the capital of Verdicchio, the crisp white grape that defines this corner of the Province of Ancona, and the museum makes that identity legible through tens of thousands of bottle labels gathered from the 1800s to today. The visit is short, charming and unusual—roughly an hour or so—and it sits at the heart of a town that lives and breathes wine, with the tourist office, a wine-tasting enoteca and a monastic herb garden all folded into the same cave complex.