Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG “Conte Gastone” 2020
Falstaff 92
Wine Description
Conte Gastone is Massimago's Amarone, the one wine where this determinedly fresh handed estate lets Valpolicella's big method speak. As is traditional for the appellation, the blend rests on Corvina and Corvinone with Rondinella in support, picked from the organic limestone and clay slopes of the Mezzane valley and dried through the winter before a slow fermentation and a rest in wood.
Even at full scale the house signature holds: dried cherry and plum, sweet spice, cocoa and a balsamic trace over a palate that stays lifted and savory rather than heavy, with ripe, fine tannin. It drinks well on release and will improve for years.
Decant for an hour and serve at 16 to 18 °C beside braised beef cheeks, pastissada de caval or roast game; at the end of a Venetian dinner it takes to aged Monte Veronese and a slow last hour at the table.
Winery
Massimago has stood at Mezzane di Sotto since 1883, on the eastern edge of Valpolicella about 30 kilometres from Verona. Camilla Rossi Chauvenet took the estate in hand in 2003, turning a farm that once sold its grapes into a small, quality first producer: 33 hectares of woodland and vines, 16 of them planted, on limestone and clay slopes farmed organically, certified since 2014 and free of synthetic treatments since 2008. The style is deliberately fresh and modern, Valpolicella built on energy and drinkability rather than sheer ripeness, with power kept in reserve for the Amarone.
