ITALY NORTH EASTERN ITALY
North Eastern Italy This region has a huge array of wine styles, grape varieties and topography. It spans from the Po Valley’s bland and over-produced/industrial Trebbiano that gave Italy’s wine such a bad name in the ‘70s and ‘80s to Alto Adige/Sudtirol’s steep wine terraces in the Dolomites where the viticulture follows the language: 70% German. In between these two extremes you find the rich red wines east of Lake Garda: Valpolicella and Amarone. The wines of Veneto are perhaps the most famous, with Italy’s Soave as the country’s most widely recognised white wine. The best are alluring, not overly-complicated wines with a ‘soave’ mouth-feel. It’s all in the name. Garganega is the grape used here sometimes blended with Trebbiano. The best examples come from the volcanic hill soils in or near the Classico region. Further west on the way to Lake Garda from Venice you reach the Valpolicella region where the Corvina grape is blended among others. The ‘Ripasso’ style became prominent in the 1980s with various large producers like Masi’s Campofiorin becoming popular. Here Valpolicella is fermented on pressed/used grape skins of the Amarone, creating a mid-way point between Valpolicella and Amarone in style. In a warmer climate alcohol and richness aren’t hard to achieve, and elegant finessed wines appear more popular, these wines are more admired than regularly purchased – but good examples are wonderful.
In amongst these traditional styles are wines marked simply by their IGT status as they use ‘international’ aka ‘originally French’ grape varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc and Carmenere. San Leonardo – a northern, mountainous sibling of Sassicaia – is a Vigneti delle Dolomiti IGT. Giacomo Tachis (the expert winemaker behind Sassicaia) consulted there from 1985-1999. The wine gets excellent scores and is an elegant and mountainous Bordeaux blend which releases to great acclaim most years. The region is well worth a visit. Follow Lake Garda and the Adige River up through Trentino, Alto Adige and into Austria in the summer months for wonderful hiking, food and wine tasting. The Dolomites has it all in terms of mountaineering with Alpine air and food to match.
Tom Meade
Our own I Campi produces a great array of excellence. For late release and highly priced and reviewed Amarone look out for Dal Forno and Quintarelli for the big-ticket wines. Though like all good Amarone, they require cellaring and patience
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WINE CATALOGUE
