Valpolicella

Valpolicella comes in a variety of styles. There’s the ordinary, fairly pale, lunchtime red wine. It’s generally around a fiver and is a glugging wine. They also make wines using a proportion of dried grapes, which make wines with stronger alcohol of perhaps 14% or 15% which, until recently, was considered pretty hot stuff, but now is almost normal. These wines, known as Amarone and Recioto are rich and the taste reminds me of dried figs or prunes in syrup.

There is then a third, or fourth, style, called Ripasso, which is made by passing the ordinary wine through the squeezed out skins of the dried grapes that have been used for Amarone and Recioto. This may sound a bit revolting, but it gives the wines a little more body and depth of flavour.

We tried six ordinary Valpolicella and four Ripasso wines. Our favourite straight Valpolicella was Radcliffe’s Valpolicella Classico 2005, which is £5.99/£3.99 from Thresher. It smelt nicely of morello cherries and also something attractively farmyardy, perfumed with a touch of oak. The taste was reasonable, but perhaps not as delicious as the smell promised. It was like chewing fresh grape skins, but had nice fresh acidity and was clean and fruity.

Musella, Valpolicella Superiore 2001 is £7.99 from Oddbins, but it was the oldest, so we’re paying for someone’s bank loan. It was atypical on the nose, smelling of mint and blackcurrant. Again the taste was nicely farmyardy with fresh acidity.

Pasqua Valpolicella Classico 2005 is £4.99 from Morrisons and had an attractive vanilla smell. It was quite woody in the mouth with some texture and almond on the finish. Waitrose own 2005 is a very reasonable £3.99 and tasted perfectly fine, while not exciting. Sainsbury’s SO Organic smelt cheaply of cherry lips and tasted similar. Asda’s own, at £3.04 smelt of rose soap and was thin and watery.

Our favourite Ripasso was Marks & Spencer’s 2004, which is £6.99. It had a complex, woody, creamy, liquorice smell and great texture in the mouth. The tannins were almost fuzzy, which we liked. We could feel the extra alcohol.

La Casetta, Valpolicella Classico Superiore Ripasso 2003 is a bit of a mouthful, without even mentioning the producer as Domini Veneti. It’s £9.99 from Majestic and is beautifully perfumed with oak and rich warm fruits. Again, it had fuzzy tannins. There was plenty of rich dark plummy fruit to balance this. Tesco’s own Ripasso, which is only £5.99 had little smell and this then changed to something we didn’t like much. It was thin and plain in the mouth, which is not the point of the Ripasso process, at all. Corte Giara, Ripasso Valpolicella Superiore 2003, which is £7.99 from Tesco, in fact got the least marks from the panel. However, it was my favourite wine of the evening, but perhaps difficult to understand. It smelt darkly of figs and molasses in a delicious and caramelised way. The taste was dirty and rustic, just how I like it. The panel’s a democracy, but sometimes I’m right and they’re wrong!

Valpolicella

© Copyright 2007 Mel Jones