Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG 2015
Wine Description
Ferragù's Amarone comes from old family vines in the Val d'Illasi, the eastern Veronese valley where the estate farms about eight hectares of reds. Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella and Oseleta are dried for around 70 days, fermented slowly, then aged three years in small French and American oak with a further year in glass before release, the estate's standard route for this wine.
The house style is powerful and deep fruited, with vanilla and black pepper spice over dark dried cherry and plum, carried by dense, velvety tannins. A decade on, the 2015 is in its confident middle years, the fruit still dark and sweet but the spice and savoury tones coming forward. Decant it for 45 minutes and serve at 18 °C with venison, roast or braised meats, rich stews and aged cheeses; a Venetian table would set it beside fegato alla veneziana with polenta and let it take the lead.
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.
