Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG Classico 2018
Vinous 97
Wine Description
Quintarelli's Amarone della Valpolicella Classico is the bottle on which the estate's worldwide standing rests, and it reaches the market only after roughly a decade in the cellar at Negrar.
Corvina and Corvinone lead the blend with Rondinella and small amounts of other traditional varieties. The best bunches dry on racks for months in the fruit loft, as Amarone requires, then ferment slowly through winter and rest for years, around nine in vintages we have followed, in large old oak botti.
The result is unmistakable: dried cherry and plum, fig, dark chocolate, tobacco and sweet spice, with a balsamic thread and a texture that stays silky despite the concentration.
The 2018 is the current young release and can be cellared with total confidence for decades.
Serve at 18 °C after a careful decant. It suits braised beef cheeks, venison or aged Monte Veronese, and in Venice we pour it with pastissada de caval, the old horse meat stew, when a table wants the full Veronese ritual.
Winery
Giuseppe Quintarelli, the quiet master of Valpolicella, ran his family's hillside estate at Negrar from 1950 until his death in 2012 and set a standard the region still measures itself against. His daughter Fiorenza and her family keep the cellar exactly as he left it: about eleven hectares of vines, long natural drying of the grapes, slow fermentations and years of rest in large old botti, with every wine released only when the family judges it ready. Production stays near sixty thousand bottles a year, and the famous handwritten labels still leave the estate at their own unhurried pace.
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