Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG Classico Riserva “Ca’ Florian” 2016
James Suckling 94Decanter 94Gambero Rosso 3 Bicchieri
Wine Description
Ca' Florian is Tommasi's Amarone Riserva and its clearest statement of origin, drawn from terraced marogne plots in the Ca' Florian vineyard at Pedemonte, the family's home site since 1902, on soils unusually high in iron and magnesium. Corvina 75%, Corvinone 20% and Rondinella 5% dry for around 100 days on bamboo racks in an airy loft, ferment for a month on indigenous yeasts in oak vats, then age four years, the first in French barriques and the rest in 35 hectolitre Slavonian casks, with at least another year in bottle. Fewer than 9,000 bottles are made in a vintage.
At 15.5% it is full bodied and austere: ripe red fruit set against licorice, bitter cocoa and a dark mineral grip, built to evolve slowly over decades. The 2016 is still young for a Riserva; give it a long decant now or leave it several more years in the cellar. Serve at 18 °C with game, a rib of beef, or pastissada de caval, the old Veronese stew that has always met aged Amarone.
Winery
Tommasi has been a family house since 1902, when Giacomo Tommasi bought his first vineyard in the Valpolicella Classica north of Verona. Four generations later the family farms hundreds of hectares, including over a hundred in the Classica hills around Pedemonte, yet the cellar still turns around historic sites such as Ca' Florian, Rafael on Monte Masua and the Conca d'Oro. The style is classically Veronese: long appassimento, fermentation on indigenous yeasts, patient aging in large Slavonian oak casks, and a range that runs from easy drinking Valpolicella to one of the region's best known Amarone.
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