Amarone!

This Italian red wine is considered one of Italy’s three greatest red wines, along with Barolo from Piedmont and Brunello di Montalcino from Tuscany. It’s the most prestigious wine from the Veneto region. The wine comes from a region called Valpolicella (Vol-pole-ee-CHEL-la) just north of the town of Verona in northeast Italy. The name Amarone comes from the Italian word Amaro, meaning tart, bitter. The different styles of Amarone have traditionally had a distinctive raisiny character and or a bitterish edge at times. As you taste the wine, it’s also not uncommon to taste a little sweetness from the concentrated sugars.

Amarone (Ah-ma-ROH-nay) is unique in the sense that it uses dried or shriveled grapes vs a traditional method of picking and pressing the grapes after harvest like most wines. This unique method is called appassimento. It's a natural way to increase the concentration of sugar in the grapes, unfortunately, at the expense of volume. It takes about 2 pounds of fresh grapes to make a bottle of wine. After the drying process it will reduce the weight of the grapes by about a third, meaning that 2 pounds of grapes will make only a half a bottle of wine.

The major grape varieties used to produce Amarone are Corvina, Malinara and Rondinella. The grapes are allowed to dry for up to a few months then the dried and shriveled grapes are pressed and fermented to produce a dry wine with dense and concentrated flavors with a rich velvety texture. The grapes high sugar content from the drying process will result in a wine with high alcohol content with a minimum of 14%, and the average is 15-16% for the finished wine.

When pairing this wine with food, you will need to take into consideration that this is a full bodied, concentrated wine. The wine will be best paired with hearty foods like lamb, steak and osso bucco. The aromas/flavors of cherries, plum, coffee, licorice, bittersweet chocolate and fig are what you will find in this wine. If you are not serving a hearty course, consider paring this wine at the end of a meal with a cheese plate. The wine will work well with strongly flavored, sharp and very ripe cheeses. A few suggestions would include dried Provolone Piccante, Pecorino Romano, Parmigianino Reggiano and Gorgonzola.

Cheers until next time!