In the first century, the ancient Romans acquired and then swarmed their newly conquered territories, bringing back to Rome the loot they found on their war path. This is how we got to modern Amarone della Valpolicella.
The Romans, the most formidable army of the first millennium, had a varied diet but some of the ingredients did not travel well, remember, refrigerated trucks were not around at the time. So the Romans used strong spices and other elements to hide the not-too-pleasant taste of partially rotten meat, fish and vegetables well past their prime. One of their favorite preservative dressings was a strangely made up blend of dried fish eggs and fish interiors, very salty indeed, but perfect for hiding the not-too-fresh flavors of their dishes.
The savvy warriors then came up with a good solution to counterbalance the saltiness of their diet: wine, especially sweet wine. This type of wine had also a great quality in its fairly high alcohol level, a natural preservative, allowing the wine to travel well from far corners of the Empire back to Rome. The sugar level, which accompanies a high alcohol level, was also perfect to counter balance the saltiness of their food.
Verona was, at this point in history, one of the strongholds of the Empire (the beautiful Arena di Verona Coliseum was built during this time and is still used for performances). The favorite wine of the region was the Recioto, a sweet nectar made from a local grape varietal called Corvina. This derives from the word "corvo", raven in English, because of its dark, almost black color at maturation. Elegant, sweet (not sugary sweet), and harmonious, it worked well with the Roman's diet, and it traveled well. There was however a problem. Recioto was not an easy wine to make, and it still isn't. Occasionally, the grapes do not cooperate, and fermentation happens too fast or too slow. In the old days especially, without the technological aids we have today, it was hard to handle.
The resulting wine coming out of the occasional "bad" batch of Recioto was a wine mostly consumed by the locals and simply called Amarone, translated as "the bitter one". The old saying in the Valpolicella valley was, and still is, that an Amarone is a Recioto gone "bad".
Now that you have a hint of how this wine came to life, let's move forward a good millennium.
I am at this point a 21-year-old man, not much of a drinker, actually never drank much beside water, a professional soccer player and architecture student who just moved back to the Veneto region for a new soccer contract. I was not very knowledgable in wines. One of my uncles, Giovanni, was at the time the president of the board for Viticulture Science of Regione Tri-Veneto, the area that covers Veneto, Friuli and Alto Adige. He knew all the wine producers in this area, he oversaw the final exams for oenologists and he was a connoisseur of wines. He invited me to join him in his traditional buying trip to the area of Valpolicella to purchase his favorite wine, Amarone della Valpolicella. It was 1979, and we were buying Amarone at 80 cents per liter.
Twenty-eight years later, in 1997, I found Lorenzo Begali, he had just started bottling his own wines, and I just started Siema Wines. Lorenzo's first estate bottling of Amarone was the 1993 vintage; up to then he was selling his grapes to Quintarelli, considered the father of modern Amarone. By 1998, the following year, his Recioto won the "Palio del Recioto" a competition run and evaluated by local producers of Recioto, up to then Lorenzo's was the runner up for 12 consecutive years. He never competed again. Lorenzo said it was a crazy amount of work which also involved 40 days and nights of monitoring the fermentation process. The same year he got his first "Three Glasses Award" from the Gambero Rosso, first of many consecutive.
After that trip came another one, it was Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, the birthplace of Prosecco and Cartizze.
But this is another story......
Have a great Thanksgiving!
Manu
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