La Collina dei Ciliegi Peratara Valpolicella Superiore 2020
£30.25
The wine
A full, rich and velvety wine with beautifully integrated tannins and complex aromas of cherry, violet and wild berries layered with herbal notes and delicate spice. Great minerality gives a distinctive and fresh finish.
Superiore requires a minimum alcohol and at least a year of ageing before release, and the fruit is generally drawn from better sites. From vineyards this high the wine keeps a cool-climate structure, with the Corvina fruit given more concentration by low yields rather than by the drying process used for Amarone.
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.
