“They boast that they find a use for everything about a pig but his squeal”
Kurt Vonnegut’s “Mother Night”
In the northeast of Italy, in the vinicultural zone of Veneto, lies the Valpolicella wine region, which produces wine under the same name. This region is one of the well-known Italian red wine producers, alongside with Chianti, Barolo, and Brunello, if not in terms of quality, then certainly in terms of quantity.
The base of Valpolicella wine consists of four autochthonous grape varieties that exist almost exclusively in this region: Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella, and Molinara. Corvina is the best and most representative of these. It produces light, low-tannic wine with good acidity and aroma of sour cherries. According to modern wine law, Corvina must comprise 45 to 95% of the Valpolicella blend. Corvinone has similar characteristics, and its proportion in the blend can be up to 50%. Rondinella contributes herbal aromas and some tannins to the blend. Molinara, an aromatic and high-acid variety, is almost out of use nowadays.
As a result, we have a light- to medium-bodied wine with good acidity, light tannins, and a relatively pale color. It features aromas of cherry and herbs, with a light bitter almond notes. This characterizes well-made Valpolicella, which can often be found among Valpolicella Classico wines. However, mass-market Valpolicella tends to be a light, pale, acidic wine with a dull taste.
When your neighbors are such giants of bold, saturated wines like Barolo or Brunello, it’s a shame to produce such a wine. While quantity can sometimes substitute quality, it is not the right path for a good winemaker.
Valpolicella winemakers found a way to elevate their wine. Corvina, along with the other varieties in the Valpolicella blend, has thick skins, making them suitable for light drying after harvest. The Italian term for such yet-to-be raisins (and the winemaking technology based on them) is “passito” This old method, traced back to the ancient Greeks, is used in many regions to produce naturally sweet wines. After harvest, the grapes are lightly dried, eliminating about one-third of their water content. That increases the concentration of sugars and aromatic compounds. Traditionally, grapes were dried on straw mats, that’s why such wines are often named “straw wines.”
Valpolicella traditionally produces Recioto della Valpolicella, a sweet, deep, and aromatic wine. Grapes for this wine are dried in whole bunches within special warm, dry rooms for three weeks to three months. Despite its high price, Recioto della Valpolicella has always been a popular wine.
How does sweet wine become sweet? The fermentation process must be stopped before completion, meaning before the yeasts convert all the sugar into the alcohol. This requires continual monitoring of the sugar level during fermentation, so to halt the process at the right moment. Note that yeasts will continue consuming sugar and producing alcohol until either all the sugar is gone or they die from alcohol intoxication. By the way, if you want to know more about different methods of sweet wine production, you can find it here.
Occasionally, oblivious Italian winemakers would forget about their Recioto and miss the right moment to stop fermentation. This resulted in a dry wine, considered a spoilage at the time. However, in the early 1950s, influenced by new approaches in viniculture, they reevaluated these “spoiled” products and discovered that they were actually quite good and could be marketed. Special yeast strains that could withstand high alcohol content were introduced.
This marked the birth of Amarone della Valpolicella, a dry red wine made from dried passito grapes. This rich, aromatic wine quickly gained global popularity. Its name comes from the Italian word “amaro,” meaning “bitter,” as it was initially contrasted with the sweet Recioto.
High concentration of sugar in the dried grape gives Amarone a high alcohol content. The allowed minimum is 14% ABV, but usually, the wine has 15-16%.
Amarone is a unique wine. Typically, dry full-bodied wines with high alcohol content are made in regions with a warm climate, where grapes can accumulate high levels of sugar during the growing season. Typical examples are Australia and California. The downside of such a climate is a low concentration of acid in the grapes, which often leads to featureless, unbalanced, jammy wine. Valpolicella, however, is a region with a cool climate, so the berries maintain good acidity. The high sugar content is achieved by removing part of the water during the drying process.
Like Recioto, Amarone is aged in large neutral oak barrels for at least two years, often longer. The wine is ideal for long aging in the bottle. Good vintages require about 10 years to fully develop their taste and have the potential to age for up to 20 years.
As a result, Amarone is a full-bodied, high-alcohol wine with well-balanced acidity and a cherry aroma.
Any red wine, after fermentation, is separated from the must (which is skins, seeds, and remaining pulp). This must is often used for grappa production, or as a fertilizer, or simply discarded. The must is a byproduct of Recioto and Amarone also. The winemakers of Valpolicella felt pity about this must: it is a shame to waste such good stuff, full of phenols, tannins, and other beautiful compounds concentrated in passito grapes! Not all compounds can be transferred from must to wine, especially when they are so concentrated. The Scroogelike souls of Italian winemakers were hurt, and they decided to use this must for winemaking. Thus, Valpolicella Ripasso came on the winemaking scene.
This is the wine of double fermentation (ripasso). Then Recioto (or Amarone) is fermented, they separated from the must, and moved to barrels for aging. Its must is combined with the newly made Valpolicella, and this is how the second fermentation begins. The wine extracts everything from the must that is left after Amarone or Recioto fermentation. The result is a light version of Amarone, named Valpolicella Ripasso. This silky wine is lighter than Amarone but much more saturated than simple Valpolicella, with a bright cherry taste and light almond bitterness. Ripasso is less expensive than Amarone, and not even a drop of the valuable content of costly passito grapes is lost.
Not only do the owners of Chicago Stockyards have the talent to extract every drop from their income source.
And a rare person can produce an excellent product at the same time.
