There is a good reason why Italian wines go particularly well with food. Drink wine on its own in Italy, without food (or, almost as bad, without company) and you will get looks that will leave you wondering if you forgot to use deodorant after your morning shower.
Valpolicella is a classic example of a wine that is made to go with food. Light in body and best served on the cooler side, it is usually acidic, making it a perfect pairing with pastas and meats, especially when tomato sauce is in the mix. Spaghetti and meatballs or lasagne with Valpolicella create marriages typically associated with heaven.
Of course, I am referring to the classic table wines, because Valpolicella is not a grape, but a region in the province of Verona, a beautiful, smallish city that features an arena that packs about 9,000 people a night during the summer opera season. It is also the setting for Romeo and Juliet, and thousands of tourists stream past a balcony that is (wrongly) promoted as the scene where the smitten Juliet called out the unseen object of her love, “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?”
The Valpolicella region, or denominazione, predominantly grows three types of grapes — Corvina Veronese, Rondinella and Molinara — and produces some heavier, more complex red wines, too.
Amarone is a dark, heavy and very intense wine, the result of grape clusters being dried, traditionally, on straw mats for about four months. The appassimento, or drying process, causes water in the grapes to evaporate. The juice, when pressed, is concentrated, resulting in a wine much higher in alcohol than the lighter basic Valpolicella. Because the juice is so much more concentrated, the fermentation is slowed and can take more than a month.
If the fermentation is stopped before fermentation has run its course, the result is a sweeter wine called Recioto della Valpolicella. That wine can also be used to create a sparkling version.
When Amarone is made the pomace, or leftover skins and seeds, still contains residual sugars and, thanks to some frugal recycler in the not so distant past, they still have a use. Basic Valpolicella is added to the pomace and a secondary fermentation begins. The result is Ripasso, which has some of the characteristics of Amarone, but with a lower alcohol content and less body. Ripasso is often considered “the poor man’s Amarone” — it commands a much lower price in the marketplace.
One of our favourite Italian wine producers is Masi, a huge company that produces consistent, reliable wines at reasonable prices. It was Masi that first marketed wines made with the Ripasso process and it took a while before it was allowed under Italy’s strict laws governing nearly all aspects of grape growing and winemaking.
When shopping for wines in the Valpolicella family of reds, expect to pay the lowest prices for the table wines and the highest for Amarone. It’s a matter of simple economics based on the amount of labour and time each of the wines takes up in the winery. The table wine is pressed, fermented, aged (usually not for too long), bottled and shipped out. The Amarone, which typically costs more than $60 a bottle, takes more labour and care because the grapes have to be spread on the mats, checked regularly — obviously an airy, dedicated space is use for the appassimento process. Because Ripasso uses regular table wines which are then refermented with the Amarone pomace, it too needs longer in the winery. Ripasso wines can be found for as little as $15, but expect to pay $25-$30 for a good one.
Lorne Eckerlsey is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.