{"id":2233,"date":"2015-07-19T23:02:42","date_gmt":"2015-07-19T15:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/?p=2233"},"modified":"2019-02-03T15:42:18","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T07:42:18","slug":"verona-amarone-tasting-and-a-twilight-walk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/2015\/07\/19\/verona-amarone-tasting-and-a-twilight-walk\/","title":{"rendered":"Verona – Amarone Tasting and a Twilight Walk"},"content":{"rendered":"

I knew nothing about Amarone so our visit to winemaker Nicolis this past April was a most enjoyable education particularly when accompanied by copious amounts of food and wine at dinner and a twilight walk in Verona.\u00a0The tasting of good Amarone also debunked my view that this wine tends to be sweet. It was, in fact, one of the nicer red wines we tried on our wine tour of Italy.<\/p>\n

\"Nicolis<\/a>
The NIcolis winery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Valpolicella<\/a>
The Y-shaped trellis used in the Valpolicella support relatively tall grape vines<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the rugged scenery of Sicily, we were back in the rolling hills and sculpted gardens of northern Italy. The Valpolicella\u00a0is famed for its production of amarone and wine made from local grapes – corvina, rondinella, molinara and croatina.<\/p>\n

\"Grape<\/a>
Young shoot off a vine will turn into grapes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Crates<\/a>
The stacked crates which hold the drying grapes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amarone is distinct from other wine due to its unique production. After the grapes are harvested, they are in fact left to dry for three months. So by the time they are crushed to extract the juices for wine, they are probably more like raisins. Hence, to produce a bottle of Amarone requires more grapes (twice as much) than other red wines.<\/p>\n

Amarone shouldn’t be sweet because\u00a0while the grapes are harvested ripe and then dried, the subsequent\u00a0fermentation process turns sugars into alcohol. This is one reason why Amarones have higher alcohol content (15%) \u00a0than most other wines (11%-13%). Amarone is left to age in barrels for anywhere from two to five years with the latter being the traditional requirement. It’s only if the fermentation process is shortened that there will be more sugar and a sweeter tasting wine that is the Recioto, a dessert wine. The leftover skins from the Amarone and Recioto, can also be used to mix with Valpolicella Classico wine to produce Ripasso, an alternative red.<\/p>\n

\"Nicolis'<\/a>
Barrels of Ripasso and Amarone in Nicolis’ cellar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On to the tasting. We took a drive to Verona where we walked to a nice rustic trattoria with a fantastic cellar.\u00a0\u00a0Along the way, we entered the old city from the Castel Vecchio bridge, walked by the Verona Arena and through the main shopping streets.<\/p>\n

\"Verona<\/a>
Verona at dusk from the Castel Vecchio bridge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Verona's<\/a>
Walking along the Castel Vecchio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Looking<\/a>
Looking at Porta Nuova<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Restaurants<\/a>
Walking along the cafes and restaurants by the Verona Arena<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Verona<\/a>
Shops near the Verona Arena<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Pedestrian<\/a>
One of the main shopping streets in Verona<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Outside<\/a>
Our dinner and tasting was at Bottega del Vino<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our dinner and wine tasting was held at the Bottega del Vino, which was a very popular restaurant judging by how busy the place was. One of the typical\u00a0Veronese dishes is horsemeat, which they do have available. But generally, we stuck with a platter of cold cuts to start with and each ordered our own subsequent dishes. The food is traditional and I had a suckling pig as my main. The food was very good but I had few photos due to the dim light and I hate using the flash.<\/p>\n

\"Bottega<\/a>
A platter of parma ham to start with<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bottega del Vino possesses an amazing wine cellar but as it is, numerous bottles line the walls and shelves around the restaurant. But it is also the wonderful old look and feel of the wine bar\/restaurant that gives the sense that you could have stepped back into the renaissance (the establishment’s roots date back to the 16th century).<\/p>\n

\"Lots<\/a>
Inside the restaurant<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Wines<\/a>
Wines displayed in Bottega del Vino<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Local<\/a>
Wine on tap?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Bottega<\/a>
Lots of bottles in Bottega del Vino’s cellar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We tasted two Amarone Classicos – 2008 and 2009 vintages – a Ripasso 2011, an\u00a0Ambrosan Amarone \u00a02005 and a Testal 2008, all from the Nicolis stable. The difference between the Ambrosan Amarone and the Amarone Classico is that the former consists of grapes from a single vineyard and is aged in a mix of Slovenian and French oak barrels. Without a doubt the Amarone was better liked over\u00a0the other wines but between the Ambrosan and the Classico, there was probably a split in preference.<\/p>\n

As we also had champagne and a Recioto with our dessert, it\u00a0was no surprise that we were well inebriated by the time we finished our meal – it was also close to midnight. So we had a late night walk through some of Verona’s most famous sights.<\/p>\n

\"Messages<\/a>
Juliette’s balcony in Verona is seen after the arch\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Verona's<\/a>
Verona’s Piazza della Erbe with the Lion of St. Mark Column and surrounding landmarks\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Verona's<\/a>
Leaving through the arch of the Palace Ragione<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Porta<\/a>
Leaving the old town through Porta Borsari\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Castel<\/a>
Walking back over the Castel Vecchio bridge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This was one of the more memorable nights on our April wine tour of Italy – partly because Verona is such a special city as is Amarone wine but also because our hosts from Nicolis were so much fun. We had a lot of laughs.<\/p>\n

Nicolis website:<\/strong>\u00a0http:\/\/www.vininicolis.com\/eng\/index.php<\/a><\/p>\n

Bottega del Vino website:\u00a0<\/strong>http:\/\/www.bottegavini.it\/bottegavini\/index.php?lang=en<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I knew nothing about Amarone so our visit to winemaker Nicolis this past April was a most enjoyable education particularly when accompanied by copious amounts of food and wine at dinner and a twilight walk in Verona.\u00a0The tasting of good Amarone also debunked my view that this wine tends to be sweet. It was, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[152,19,124],"tags":[43,29,142,31,35],"class_list":["post-2233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-italy-europe","category-italy-northernitaly","tag-featured","tag-italy","tag-veniceveneto","tag-wine","tag-wine_tasting","latest_post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2233"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2266,"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233\/revisions\/2266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gazeandgraze.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}