La Collina dei Ciliegi Prea Bianco Verona 2021
£34.95
The wine
Delicate notes of white pepper, herbs and white flowers layer with exotic fruit, through to a full and refreshing palate. A distinctive minerality lends real personality and holds the ripe fruit in balance.
A white blend of Garganega with Chardonnay and Pinot Bianco, the local grape given international company. Blending across varieties is a Veneto habit rather than a modern flourish, and here the international pair add weight and orchard fruit where Garganega provides the acidity and the almond-tinged finish.
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.
