Ca’ Rugate Amarone della Valpolicella 2023
£34.45
The wine
Intense garnet red, with concentrated sweet fruit aromas of currant, ripe blueberry and cherry, enhanced by a hint of spicy oak. Beautifully balanced on the palate, rich, full bodied and complex, with a lingering finish.
Amarone is made from grapes dried on racks for around 120 days after harvest, a process called appassimento that concentrates sugar and flavour as the berries lose up to 40 per cent of their weight. Fermented dry, it produces one of Italy's most powerful reds. The name means the bitter one, distinguishing it from the sweet Recioto it was originally a mistake of.
The producer
Ca’ Rugate
View all Ca’ Rugate winesThe Tessari family have handed this business down since the early 1900s, renaming it Ca' Rugate in 1986 after the volcanic hills where the vineyards sit. Michele, of the fourth generation, has brought considerable energy: a technologically advanced new cellar, and expansion into Valpolicella with vineyards in the hills of Montecchia di Crosara. The estate now runs to 90 hectares.
The volcanic soil is the thread running through everything. Soave sits on the remains of ancient eruptions, and the black basalt beneath the Classico zone gives Garganega a mineral, smoky character that the sandier valley floor cannot match. Garganega is a much-maligned grape, largely because Soave was made in enormous quantity and indifferent quality through the second half of the twentieth century, and estates like this one have spent decades repairing the damage.
In Valpolicella the family work the full range of styles, from fresh red through Ripasso to Amarone, and the two sweet Recioto wines are made in the manner both appellations used long before their dry versions existed. Ca' Rugate has taken Gambero Rosso's Tre Bicchieri many times over.
