SommSelect Editorial Director David Lynch has spent a lot of time in the Valpolicella region of Italy’s Veneto, where Amarone della Valpolicella remains the showy red-wine headliner. The tradition of drying grapes after harvest (to concentrate their sugars) dates to Roman times, but these days the challenge is to find a balance between concentration/sweetness and drinkability.
Over my many years of selling Italian wine, I’ve tended to reserve Amarone della Valpolicella for lovers of the richest, ripest red wines of the world—California Zinfandel drinkers and Aussie Shiraz drinkers are among the prime candidates for the Amarone experience, but even those with more light-leaning palates might occasionally be seduced by this most voluptuous of Italian reds. We’ve had many subscribers ask us why we don’t offer more Amarone wines, and I think of my own wine-drinking habits in formulating my answer: Much as I appreciate these often-profound wines, I sometimes struggle to find the right applications and/or occasions for them. Amarone, as epitomized by this 2011 from Musella, is some seriously rich, heady stuff. The classic spot for it is with a cheese course—where it comports itself well with salty, funky, veined cheeses by wrapping them in a glycerol-rich, sweetly fruity embrace—but the only problem with that is making it that far in the meal while still being able to stand. But hey, maybe I’m just a lightweight. Lovers of big reds would welcome Musella’s 2011 not just with a cheese course but with a meaty braise of some kind. It’s a big wine, yes, but not so massive as to knock it out of main-course contention. This, I think, is critical; for me, the measure of a great Amarone is not whether it is impressive but whether it’s enjoyable. This one measured up beautifully while offering good value to boot.
If the $50 range doesn’t qualify as good value for you, remember that Amarone is an expensive category of wine by nature: to make it, producers dry their grapes for several months after harvest to concentrate their sugars and produce a richer wine. This drying process, called appassimento, can stretch into the February after the harvest, with the grapes losing as much as 40% of their total weight (mostly water) in the process. The economics of Amarone are straightforward: it’s a more labor-intensive wine, and there’s less of it, so it costs more.
The raisined grapes used to make Amarone are the same local varieties used to make Valpolicella: mostly Corvina (the dominant component of any blend, ranging from 45%-95%), with smaller percentages of Rondinella, Molinara (now fading from use), and other varieties both local and ‘international.’ And interestingly (if not as famously), producers in Valpolicella have engaged in a very similar ‘traditional versus modern’ debate to the one in Barolo, with much of the discussion centered on the wood vessels in which the wines are aged: In one camp are ‘traditional’ producers who prefer to age their wines in larger, older wood vessels, which typically create a lighter-colored, more oxidative style of wine; in the other are more ‘modern’ vintners who prefer the extra polish and deeper color imparted by newer, smaller (and often French) barrels. Regardless, what you get in Amarone is one of the most deeply extracted red wines on the planet: as the grapes wither during the drying process, they are mostly losing water, resulting in juice that is ultra-concentrated. There’s a dramatic increase in sugar without a corresponding decrease in acidity, yet the perception of most drinkers is that Amarone is somehow ‘sweet.’ In fact, the maximum amount of residual sugar allowed in an Amarone ranges from 12-16 grams/liter, depending on the final alcohol content. This is not, in any technical sense, a ‘sweet’ wine. The name ‘Amarone,’ is derived from the Italian amaro (‘bitter’), as the style originated when a barrel of the original, sweet version of dried-grape Valpolicella, known as recioto, fermented to dryness on its own. What you’re tasting when you taste an Amarone is not an excess of residual sugar (this wine contains just over 6 grams/liter, making it quite ‘dry’ by definition) but an abundance of fruit extract. There’s a glycerol richness that coats the palate and masks some of the tannins, lending it drinkability in its youth.
Musella’s 2011 comes from biodynamically farmed grapes grown on a true showplace of a winery/estate, which has a beautiful inn on its manicured property. Grapes were harvested in early October and withered under controlled conditions until January, when the raisined bunches were pressed and fermented in stainless steel. The wine aged in a mix of new and used French oak barrels of various sizes (700, 1,500, and 2,000-liter capacity) and spent eight months refining in bottle before release.
In the glass, it’s an opaque purple/ruby with magenta highlights at the rim, with heady aromas of black plum, blueberry compote, Chambord liqueur, resin, leather, baking spices, and chocolate. There’s a palpable viscosity on the full-bodied palate, nicely balanced by acidity and ever-so-slightly grippy tannins. Whereas many modern Amarones skew almost Port-like in their intensity (despite
not being fortified), this one stops well short of that; for me it falls in the all-important “main course-worthy” category, provided it’s a main course of adequate richness. Decant this wine a good hour before serving in large Bordeaux stems at a cool temperature (55-60 degrees), which will tamp down its alcohol heat. It’s a wine that needs something along the lines of braised short ribs to tame it, and ultimately, the best day to open it may well be the coldest one. This will warm you right up!
— D.L.
