2010 Tasting Trip, Day 1. Valpolicella

Day 1 of tasting. (In the interest of clarity and brevity, I only mention the highlights of our tastings. If you’re curious about other wines, drop a note in the comments section at the end of the post.)

Our usual stops on day 1 are with Valpolicella producers. First stop is Allegrini, in the town of Fumane, where Christian takes us up the hill to the La Poja vineyard – gorgeous in the swirling clouds coming off Lago di Garda – and then down to the “Palazzo della Torre” property where the family is busy restoring the historic property. La Poja is a unique wine – it is made from Corvina, the same grape as Amarone, partly dried (raisined) and then fermented to full dryness (despite its name, Amarone usually contains a bit of residual sugar). The La Poja vineyard was carved out of the top of a hill, and has incredible sun and air – the grapes stay healthy, get plenty of breezes to combat rot and help cool them down at night, and are harvested at incredible levels of ripeness. The La Grola vineyard is just below this and only slightly less well-exposed. At less than half the cost of a bottle of La Poja, the La Grola bottling is an incredible value. We taste through the lineup back at the winery with Christian – standouts are the La Grola, La Poja and the Recioto, and amazing and balanced red dessert wine. Overall, I consider Allegrini to be a modern winery – they vinify for bright fruit, relatively low acid, and are not shy about the use of new French barrels – and this visit confirms this opinion. The wines are uniformly delicious and drinkable.

2008 Allegrini, Soave. 80% Graganega, 20% Chardonnay. Good pineapple, apple and mineral. This is eminently drinkable, forward and fresh. Good for restaurant wine programs, has a touch of residual sweetness, about 3g per liter. Nice for the American market – this should be a KJ killer. 2.5nb

2006 Allegrini, La Grola. Corvina and 20% Syrah. All fermented fresh, no passito. 15 months, approx 30% new oak. Really fresh dark fruit and berry nose, with good frshness and length, more tannin that I would have expected. Very fruity and juicy and still well-strucutured. Lovely complexity. This is young, but really delicious, great harmony and balance. Very spicy and complex. Lovely and long finish, ripe tannins, needs 3-4 years. Nice. 3.0+, solid.

2005 Allegrini, Amarone. Corvina, Rondinella and 5% Oseletta. Lovely fruit, very fresh, of dried cranberries and cherries, the tobacco element has not yet come out. Good chocolate, about 7-8 g residual sugar, nice freshness, but could use a bit more acid to balance out the very impressive fruit. This has a bit of the stewed plum element beginning to come out that should emerge more with age. Really nice but a touch sweet for my taste – needs a bit more acid to keep the whole thing balanced. 4.0- nb, quite quaffable, but very modern, with lots of good things going on. Drink 2012-2019.

2005 Allegrini, La Poja. 100% Corvina Veronese. 20 months oak, 50-70% new, approximately. Lovely nose, fresh and lively, dark berries, musk, cherries, earth, chalky tannins, very young, needs time, lovely. This is a wine of great structure and class and shows good potential for ageing – the acids are clearly defined and in balance with the considerable fruit. Saddle leather, spices, fresh berries and black pepper notes. A meaty, spicy wine. Lovely! Great balance as it goes down. Really long in the finish. Great structure, needs time and air. A lovely and complete wine. Gorgeous. 4.5- Drink 2013-2023.

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The afternoon visit is to Zenato – a much more traditional winery where the style of the wine is concerned. The winery itself is modern and beautiful – it is of much more recent construction than the Allegrini cantina – but the wines show more acid, better-defined tannins, and an elegance and focus that is different from the Allegrini wines, which focus on opulence and more forward fruit.

Verona is at the center of an interesting wine-producing area. To the west and north, up against the foothills of the Alps, is the Valpolicella, where the standout wines are Amarone and Recioto. To the east is Soave. Other wine areas are the Bardolino and Lugana areas, and further to the east the Veneto has many interesting areas, not least of which is Breganze, where we are headed tomorrow. The Valpolicella is a unique world, though. Some background: Corvina is the dominant grape, with Rondinella and Oseletta rounding the main permitted varieties. There are also plantings of the usual international varieties, including the usual suspects Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc, and with small plantings, surprisingly, of Syrah. The characteristic winemaking technique here is passito: to dry the grapes before fermentation so as to increase the intensity of the resulting wine.

Historically, the top wine was Recioto – the Corvina grapes were harvested and laid on mats in crates to dry out like raisin for anywhere from 2-4 months. The grapes would dehydrate and shrink, increasing the balance of solids to liquids. The grapes are fermented in January or February; the winemaker stops the fermentation when he or she has the level of sugar and alcohol they want. In the past, this happened naturally from the winter cold; the yeast died and fermentation stopped. This somewhat haphazard process is now all controlled but the end result is a delicious sweet wine. Amarone is much more recent phenomenon – it happened when one warm winter the wine never stopped fermenting and went to nearly full dryness. Amarone is so named because the wine is slight bitter – that’s why this wine was made sweet originally. However, well-made Amarone is a thing of rare beauty. It is best on wintry night, preferably one with snow and wind, and is enjoyed best on its own, or with a hard cheese. It is aptly called a “vino da meditazione.”

Other wines from the valley are basic Valpolicella, made from Corvina and the other main varieties, to which can be added small amounts of the international varieties. A “Ripasso” Valpolicella is a Valpolicella which has been passed over the skins and solids of the Amarone for added richness and staying power. Essentially, the Valpos are finished with their fermentation by the end of October or early November, and they go into tank or cask. Like all red wines, the Amarone is pressed after it finishes fermentation. The remaining solids – called pomace or vinacce – are typically sold to grappa makers. But the producers that make a Ripasso take these Amarone solids and soak the basic Valpolicella on them for typically 1-3 days. The Amarone tannins and complexity rubs off on the simpler wine, making it more ageworthy and complex.

Back to Zenato – the wines as we taste through the lineup are classically styled, linear, focused and delicious, and a particular standout is the 2009 San Benedetto Lugana – a white wine from the area around the winery just at the south end of Lake Garda. Lugana is a long-suffering area that has never made a blip on the wine world’s radar; it’s always been an area that strove for quantity over quality. Historically the wines have been thin, reedy, attenuated: basically piss dressed up with citrus juice. Not this one! It should run about $12-15 on the shelf in the US and is an incredible value f you are looking for a white on the crisp end of things: with ripe pear and apple with hints of lemon and pineapple; my notes describe it as “sunshine in a bottle.”

I have to mention the Amarone here as well, which is a delicious wine in need of a few years ageing. Allegrini and Zenato are two places I like to visit as I think they represent the different ends of the winemaking spectrum here – one voluptuous, one elegant. Allegrini’s Amarone is to Zenato’s what Sophia Loren is to Audrey Hepburn. Both are gorgeous, and very, very different. Zenato’s 2006 Amarone is a delicious combination of dried and fresh fruit aspects, with notes of Davidoff cigars (there was a smell just like walking into the Davidoff store in Zürich; I don’t smoke, but I love just walking into that store), pure dark chocolate, black cherries and tea leaves. Lovely.

2009 Zenato, San Benedetto Lugana, 13%. Lemons, some green apples and pears, floral, crisp, in the mouth, hints of rich sweetness and sunshine in a bottle. Lovely, lovely, lovely. 2.5+. Simple and direct, delicious.

2005 Zenato, Cressaso. 100% Corvina Veronese. Younger vines (25 year old). (No apassimento). Fresh grapes into the fermentation tanks. Tonneaux for 18 months, very peppery, dark fruits, good juicy fruits forward. A medium-to-big wine with good medium intensity, also very drinkable in the short-to-medium term. Delicious, with layers of fruit and minerals. Fills out with some air – this is lovely. 3.5+ drink 2011-2018

2006 Zenato, Amarone Classico. Very lovely but tight and a bit closed. Lovely aromas of Davidoff cigars, dark chocolate, black cherries and tea leaves. On the palate, this shows precise balance and harmony, tobacco, dark fruit flavors and no discernable oak or vanilla. Dark pure chocolate. The sweetness here is much more muted and in balance – this is a more elegant wine than the more modern offerings. Really lovely, only about 8-12g residual sugar. Really balanced, nice and drinkable. 4.0+ Drink 2014-2026

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From here, we make a phone call and rush back to Valpolicella to meet with the Clementi family. I have very sketchy notes from this visit – it was a walk-around tasting of things exclusively in tank, barrel and cask, but the wines are uniformly well-made and fun to drink. We bough a bunch of bottles to take with us – the 2004 Amarone and the 2006 Valpolicella were particular standouts. It is hard to take notes while walking around, translating for two and hanging on to a notebook, camera and glass. Sig. Clementi was the classic country gentleman farmer – wearing a bow tie to receive his visitors. His daughter kept things moving along, afraid, I think, that her dad would talk our ears off to the wee hours of the morning if given a chance. But the wines were delicious, the family charming as hell, and I look forward to a return visit to explore their wines more. Unfortunately, they are not exported to the US.

Back to La Bottega del Vino for dinner, where the surprise standout dish was a filled gnocchi – stuffed with braised donkey cheeks. Delicious, and we celebrate the successful conclusion of the first day of tasting with a gem for the Bottega cellars.

1990 Allegrini, “La Poja” IGT Veronese
Major stones on the nose – this is all about limestone wrapped in layers of dried black stone fruits, with hints of dark chocolate and vanilla – the wood is superbly integrated and the length of this amazing for a wine 20 years old. Complex and satisfying, this is a perfect example of how well Corvina can age. I wish I could say more about this wine, but it was a bottle that left me more or less speechless, just enjoying the sensations coming from my tongue. When I traded off the Primitivo Cellar, I let the La Poja bottles go with a big sale to a collector who really wanted them – tasting this wine makes me regret that decision. 4.0+ nb

Comments

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