Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG Classico Riserva “Le Origini” 2018
Wine Description
Le Origini is Bolla's Amarone Riserva, the bottling the house points to when asked what its long history in Valpolicella amounts to. The fruit is 80% Corvina and Corvinone with 20% Rondinella from vines around fifty years old, dried through the winter in the appassimento manner, and the wine then ages the extended term the riserva rules require before release.
It is the deepest of the Bolla reds: dried cherry and plum, cocoa, tobacco and sweet spice over dense, settled tannin, with the savory cut that keeps a serious Amarone from turning heavy. The 2018 is drinking now and has a long plateau ahead.
Decant for an hour and serve at 16 to 18 °C beside braised game, pastissada de caval or aged cheeses; it is also a fine glass on its own at the end of a Venetian dinner, when the table has gone quiet.
Winery
Bolla is one of the great popularizers of Veronese wine, a house born at Soave in the late nineteenth century that carried Soave and Valpolicella onto tables across the world, above all in America. Its Amarone credentials are older than the wine's fame: the family has bottled it since the 1950 vintage. Today Bolla works from San Pietro in Cariano in the heart of the Valpolicella Classica as part of Gruppo Italiano Vini, and its selections, Le Poiane, Rhetico and the riserva Le Origini, aim at the classical, balanced center of the style.
