Roccolo Grassi Valfresca Valpolicella Superiore 2015
£31.45
The wine
Valfresca is the estate's Valpolicella Superiore, released with a decade of bottle age. Corvina gives the sour cherry and the bitter almond finish that marks the region, and time has turned that into something savoury, dried-fruited and considerably more complex.
Roccolo Grassi farm at Mezzane di Sotto in the eastern hills, away from the Classico zone and cooler for it. Superiore requires a minimum alcohol and at least a year of ageing; holding a wine ten years before selling it is entirely the family's own choice.
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.
