Roccolo Grassi Recioto della Valpolicella 2019 (37.5cl)
£33.25
The wine
A sweet red of great finesse and aromatic complexity. Notes of ripe plum, red berries and cocoa are accompanied by a jammy, spicy bouquet with hints of chocolate. Rich and complex, with an underlying minerality holding the sweetness in balance.
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 grapes with fermentation halted while sugar remains. The name comes from recie, dialect for the ears of the bunch that catch most sun.
The producer
Roccolo Grassi
View all Roccolo Grassi winesRoccolo Grassi is a small family estate at Mezzane di Sotto in the eastern hills of Valpolicella, run by Marco and Francesca Sartori. Their father Bruno bottled the first wine under the name in 1996; before that the fruit had been sold on.
Mezzane sits away from the Classico zone and is cooler, and the estate farms at altitude on limestone. The house style is unusually precise for a region often associated with weight: long, slow drying for the Amarone and Recioto, restrained oak, and an insistence on acidity. They also work Oseleta, a nearly extinct native variety rescued in the 1970s, which gives colour and firm tannin in small proportions.
Production is small and the wines are made to age. Roccolo Grassi is among the names most often cited when people argue that Valpolicella deserves to be taken as seriously as Piedmont or Tuscany.
