Ep 412: Valpolicella and Amarone Refresher (per M.C. Ice's request)

<p>Valpolicella is a famed red wine region in the foothills north of the city of Verona. This area has been making wine since the time of the Ancient Greeks, whose legacy is kept alive by the common practice drying grapes to concentrate the flavors in the finished wines.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style= "display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src= "https://assets.libsyn.com/secure/show/45638/daniel-vogel-YxPkpo8L8Ck-unsplash.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="267" /><em><span style= "font-size: 8pt;">Photo: Valpolicella, from Unsplash</span></em></p> <p>We covered this with Filippo Bartolotta in episode 317, but after a conversation with M.C. Ice it became clear to me that he needed to hear the info again. It's an important wine region and it's complex, so we decided to do our version and get anyone up to speed who may also still be a little confounded about these wines! </p> <p> </p> <p>There is much to uncover about this region, the “Valley of Many Cellars”, as it translates. The huge area makes so much wine under so many different sub-regions and areas, but not all are created equally. Even the famed and rather new wine, Amarone della Valpolicella, which has enjoyed enormous popularity in the last 20 years, isn’t all amazing. In this show, we will take you on the full tour of the region – examining what is here, the essential components of terroir, and how to get the wines you like from this multi-faceted, diverse, and very confusing Italian region.</p> <p> </p> <p>Here are the show notes:</p> <p>We give an overview of the region:</p> <ul> <li>Valpolicella borders Lake Garda/Bardolino to the west, abuts the Lessini Mountains (part of Venetian Pre-Alps) in the north, and opens to a wide valley in the east.</li> <li>The historical area of Valpolicella winemaking is in the Monti Lessini hills but the area is much bigger due to an enlargement in 1968</li> </ul> <p><strong> </strong></p> <p><strong>Climate</strong></p> <ul> <li>Because the region spans so much land, the climate varies de