Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG 2016
Wine Description
Ferragù's Amarone 2016 comes from old family vines in the Val d'Illasi, many averaging 55 years of age, and it wears the estate's full dress: Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella and Oseleta dried for around 70 days, then 36 months in small French and American oak and a further 12 months in glass before release, landing at a substantial 17% alcohol.
The style is powerful and deep fruited, with vanilla and black pepper spice over dark dried cherry and plum, dense tannins and a long, warm finish that never turns sweet. It is drinking well now and has years of development in it. Decant it for an hour and serve at 18 °C with venison, roasts, braised and stewed meats or aged cheeses; in Venice, fegato alla veneziana with soft polenta meets it head on. A bottle for the coldest evenings and the longest dinners.
Winery
Carlo Ferragù farms about eight hectares of red varieties in the Val d'Illasi, east of Verona, at roughly 240 metres, with a further hectare of olive trees. He runs the estate with his brothers Ornello and Angelo from a cellar that pairs an old Romanesque stone farmhouse with modern equipment, and the vines behind the Amarone average around 55 years of age. Production is small and pointed at reds of scale: a Valpolicella Superiore, the estate Amarone and an Amarone Riserva grown on a single hectare at Cellore d'Illasi.
