La Collina dei Ciliegi Recioto della Valpolicella 2021 (50cl)
£29.75
The wine
Silky smooth with enveloping tannins, rich in ripe sweet fruit and layered with sweet and exotic spice, accompanied by a lingering balsamic finish. The sweet side of Valpolicella, and a fine one.
Recioto is the older wine and Amarone came from it, reputedly when a barrel was forgotten and fermented all the way dry. This is the original sweet version, made from the same dried Corvina grapes but with fermentation halted while sugar remains. The name comes from recie, dialect for the ears of the bunch that catch the most sun.
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.
