the roots of amarone (aka: vinitaly, or thereabouts)

I’m just back from the annual Omniwines trip to Italy and to be honest, I haven’t written a word in weeks. Sprinting through Verona’s convention center and tasting hundreds of wines a day at Vinitaly – the world’s largest wine tasting - didn’t leave me much time for blogging; on the subsequent winery visits I found myself much more drawn to my camera than to my pen.

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However, besides being breathtakingly beautiful, the vineyards we visited produce some of Italy’s best wines, and they deserve a mention. Now that I’m home, I thought I’d use photos and words together to tell the story of one of my favorites - a wine that has been much in the news recently due to the January death of it’s greatest champion, Giuseppe Quintarelli. So, in honor of Bepi (as his family and friends called him), here follows the tale of Amarone della Valpolicella.

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To understand Amarone, as with any great wine, you first have to know where it’s coming from. We start in the city of Verona, best known outside of the wine world as the setting of Romeo and Juliet.

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Just outside of the city, heading north and west towards Lake Garda, we find the rolling hills of the Valpolicella (the name of which is thought to come from the Greek for “valley of many cellars”). Actually made up of several neighboring valleys that include 7 different “communes” (villages), the Valpolicella produces more quality (DOC) wine than any other region in Italy besides Chianti. And Amarone, at the top of the pyramid, represents the best of the best.

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Traditionally, there are 3 varieties of grapes grown in the Valpolicella, and 4 kinds of wine that they produce. The Corvina grape provides the heart and soul of these wines, and has historically been blended with Rondinella and Molinara, which are generally considered to be of inferior quality and are being used less and less now that modern winemaking techniques allow for better balance with Corvina alone.

The base of the Valpolicella “pyramid,” and the most consumed wine in this part of Italy is “Valpolicella Classico,” a fresh, young wine that is obtained by crushing and fermenting grapes just off the vine. To make Amarone, on the other hand, these same grapes are dried out for several months until they become raisins, which are then pressed.

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Usually harvested in October, the grapes spend the winter months stacked up in special drying rooms and ventilated (to prevent mold from growing) until they’ve lost about 30-40% of their weight. This results in intense concentration, high sugar content (which then translates into 15% or more alcohol by volume), and very high prices, due to the amount of grapes being used, as well as the necessary investment of time and space in the winery.

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Midway between these two wines – and generally one of the best red wine values in Italy – is a wine called Valpolicella “Ripasso,” which offers some of the freshness of Valpolicella Classico along with some of the depth and dried-fruit character of Amarone. At its best, this Ripasso is considered to be “Baby Amarone.” It’s also a fun winemaking method to talk about.

To make Ripasso, once the Amarone has finished fermenting, the liquid wine is drained from the solid sediment, or “lees” – yeast, skins, seeds – and is moved into barrels for ageing. It’s then replaced in the fermentation tank (or barrel, depending on the producer) with young Valpolicella Classico, which is given a chance to soak on the lees for a couple of weeks (on average) and absorb some of their body and flavor. In some cases, if the yeast from the amarone is still active, the wine - now Ripasso - will even go through a partial secondary fermentation process. The result can be beautiful – and relatively affordable- usually in the low $20s retail. It’s also a great wine for food, more so than Amarone, which with all of its power will overwhelm most dishes other than strong cheese.

That leaves us just the tippity-top of the pyramid to discuss, Recioto della Valpolicella. Recioto is fundamentally the same wine as Amarone, with one critical difference: the fermentation process does not complete. The wine is left with residual sugar, and therefore lower alcohol levels. It is a dense, intricately flavored, sweet red wine that is one of the most deeply respected wines in Italy, although far less known in export markets such as the US, which tend to shy away from even the best dessert wines. To sip Recioto with dark chocolate is ambrosia – one of the world’s best food and wine pairings.

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April 6th, 2012 | vino

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