Rosso del Bepi IGT Veronese 1996
Wine Description
Rosso del Bepi is the wine Quintarelli releases instead of Amarone in years when the family decides the vintage does not deserve the grand label, which makes it one of the canniest buys in Valpolicella: declassified Amarone from the same vines, the same fruit loft and the same casks.
The grapes dry for around five months before a slow fermentation, and the wine then rests seven to nine years in large old botti before release.
It drinks like a lighter framed Amarone: dried cherry, plum and fig, cocoa, leather and sweet spice, with the house's silky tannin and a fresher, earlier drinking balance.
The 1996 is now fully mature and tertiary; stand it upright a day ahead and expect sediment.
Serve at 18 °C after a decant, with braised beef, duck, pastissada de caval in the Veronese manner, or aged Monte Veronese.
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.
