On a Tuesday morning in Sarnano, tucked into the hills of Le Marche, Italy, the weekly market fills a piazza that was already old when Columbus sailed. Cheese vendors trade gossip with grandmothers, a fishmonger’s van idles two hours in from the Adriatic, and nobody lifts a phone to photograph the scene. I have been…

Vino sfuso arrives without a label, without a cork, and without a story printed on the back. It comes out of a rubber hose connected to a stainless steel tank, into whatever container you happened to bring — a five-liter plastic jerrycan, a glass damigiana (a large glass demijohn, often wrapped in wicker or plastic…