La Collina dei Ciliegi Amarone della Valpolicella 2020
£36.75
The wine
Complex and sumptuous notes of morello cherry are enveloped by spice and delicate leathery nuance. Full bodied, with enveloping tannins and a long, balanced finish. Amarone made at altitude, which keeps it lifted.
Amarone is made from grapes dried on racks for around 120 days after harvest, a process called appassimento in which the berries lose up to 40 per cent of their weight and their sugars concentrate accordingly. Fermented dry, it becomes one of Italy's most powerful reds. Altitude here preserves the acidity that keeps it in balance.
The producer
La Collina dei Ciliegi
View all La Collina dei Ciliegi winesArmando Gianolli bought abandoned plots around the village of Erbin in the 1950s and 60s and planted more than 3,000 cherry trees, which is where the name comes from: the hill of cherries. His son Massimo turned the project into a serious wine estate, establishing 31 hectares of vineyard in 2005.
The site is what makes it interesting. Valpantena is the highest reach of Valpolicella, a narrow valley running north from Verona, and the estate's vineyards climb to 700 metres surrounded by forest. That is genuinely cool-climate ground for a region better known for warmth and concentration, and it shows in the wines: more perfume, brighter acidity and less of the sheer weight that Valpolicella can carry.
Everything is farmed sustainably, and the range covers the full Valpolicella sequence from fresh red through Ripasso and Amarone to the sweet Recioto, alongside whites from Garganega. Altitude matters increasingly as vintages warm, and estates working this high have an advantage their neighbours on the valley floor do not.
