Amarone Wine Information

Amarone della Valpolicella, or Amarone for short, is created in the Venitian region of Italy. Originally there was only one legal region, or DOC, for the Valpolicella name. These wines are made with the Corvina Veronese, Rondinella and Molinara grapes. Two sub-groups emerged, though - recioto, which is a sweet dessert wine, and amarone, which is a dry red wine with great body.

Both recioto and amarone are made with grapes that have been dried on racks, bringing out their flavors. In 1991 these two were granted their own DOCs. The land area encompassed by these three DOCs is the same, but the types of wine are quite different.

Amarone is the fourth biggest seller in Italy, behind Chianti, Asti, and Soave. This fine wine has flavors of licorice, tobacco and fig, and goes well with game and ripe cheese. Hannibal of Silence of the Lambs fame, of course, had his with fava beans. In the movie version, they had him drinking the more pedestrian chianti wine type. While some styles of amarone can be very bitter (that's where the name comes from), new styles are more fruity.

Amarone can be drunk young, while still a ruby purple, but they also age magnificently to a dark garnet for thirty years or more. A typical drinking age is 10 years. Amarone should be served around 60 F.

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