Hello my dear friends! It's almost Valentine's day! So it's time to pick that wine to impress your heartmate. Have you thought about it yet? No worries, we are here to help...
There is a story about how Amarone wine was first made... A long time ago, a producer was making 'recioto', a dessert wine made from grapes that were dried on mats after picking. This process turns the grapes closer to raisins, concentrating the flavors. The wines are lovely and taste how you’d expect raisins-turned-wine to taste, rich and sweet. But in the story the producer forgot about one of the barrels. Instead of the fermentation of the wine being stopped to maintain its high sugar levels, the process continued. When he opened the barrel to taste the wine, he realized that the wine was not sweet but bitter (technically it was a drier wine) and this new wine was “big” in style and body, which is why it is called Amarone (amaro=bitter; one=big).
Located in the northeast of Italy, Veneto is the country’s largest wine-producing region. The province of Verona is home to the famed valpolicella and amarone wines. Historically, there has been a regional tradition of drying grapes, to concentrate the flavor and produce richer wines. The autumn months, with their low temperatures and cool winds, create ideal drying conditions, while cold winters allow for slow maceration and fermentation over an extended period of time. Beside great wines produced in its territory, Verona is world wide famous also for the legend of Romeo and Juliet. Of course we do not know if Romeo and Juliet ever lived in Verona, but like in every legend there are historical elements inside the story. The two families, Montagues and Capulets really lived in Verona at the end of the 13th Century. At that time in Northern Italy there was the feud between the Pope party and the Emperor party. Even inside the same town families belonging to one party or the other were enemies. The Montagues were among the most important emperor supporting families, and even if there aren’t historical proofs, many believe that the Capulets supported the Pope. Inside what is believed to be Juliet's house, there is a courtyard with a nice balcony which for centuries has been believed to be the one from which Juliet talked to Romeo. It is a very romantic place, visited every day by thousands of lovers coming from all over the world. On the entrance wall, people write their name and love phrases inside hearts. It is the so called love wall, almost a collective work of contemporary art.
The love wall...
Not far from Juliet’s house, there is another Middle Age building considered the house of Romeo. It looks like a small castle, with a tower on one side and battlements on high walls giving us a good idea of what was the life like in the dark ages. It’s the house of the Montagues, known by everybody as the house of Romeo.
Juliet's beautiful balcony in Verona.
Coming back to the Amarone it is definitely a unique elegant wine for its type of grape and vinification procedure. For this reason, the Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella, Molinara and Oseleta grapes are used. The grapes go through a method called appassimento, which consists of drying or raisining the grapes before fermenting them. After the harvest, the grapes are distributed in two containers: plastic baskets and wooden beds with a bamboo base called arele. The grape remains in these arele and baskets for at least 100 days, according to the standards of the Amarone Classico Consortium. After this period, the fermentation process for Amarone Classico and Amarone Classico Riserva will begin. Part of the grapes will remain in the arele for a few more weeks to obtain a higher concentration of sugar. These grapes will be integrated into the sweet recioto wine. For the drying of the grapes they use two methods: when the weather is good they open all the windows of the rooms. If the weather is not so good, as it was on the day of our visit, there are large fans moving the air while dehumidifiers hanging from the ceiling work at full capacity. The color of the grapes, already in this process for two weeks, turns incredibly blue.
TV personality Carlos Julio Villar Aleman (Carlucho) and Idania González on set.
Yesterday as part of our TV segment for UnivistaTV, we talked about this particular wine and recommended our prestigious Torre Mastio Amarone della Valpolicella Classico. In Miami you can buy this wine at Jensen's Liquors, Clementine's Wine Gourmet and Grove Liquors too. Restaurants like Cipriani, Smith and Wollensky, Mahina at Isla Bella Resort also have this amarone on their wine lists! If you taste it, come back here to the comments section and let us know your impressions!
Have a nice week everyone! Until next Wednesday... Santé!
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