Veneto Annual Report: Leaping into a Fresher Future

Veneto produces the most wine of any region in Italy, followed by Sicily and Puglia, yet while the latter two are responsible for sunny wines of a Mediterranean disposition (except for Etna and its volcanic mineral infusion), Veneto offers a much broader panoply of styles and price points.

Many of the region’s wines are equipped with a cooler-climatic edge, verging on Alpine. This makes for a bevy of fresh wines of both colors, juxtaposed against Amarone, whose powerful reds remain strongly associated with the region at large.

However, shifting perceptions of quality, increasingly defined by tenets such as energy, poise and drinkability over sheer power, suggest that richer styles of Amarone are not as popular as they once were.

Veneto’s future success hinges on a pivot from external perceptions stuck in the past to an exciting present defined by wines of greater freshness and a defter touch. A string of very good vintages, particularly the exceptional 2021 (before the scalding of 2022), make a compelling case for newfound interest in the region.

During my trip to Veneto in April, I was most excited by the fine-tuning of lighter, drier styles of Valpolicella, the top denomination of red wine in the region. The best are either unadulterated by dried grapes of receive subtle inflections at most. Nicola Scienza, the owner of Rubinelli Vajol and a master of Valpolicella Classico, believes it is “straight Valpo and Recioto by which a taster should judge the quality of producers.”

His straight Classico 2022 is a giddy quaffer built for the fridge, while his Valpolicella Classico Superiore 2019 is a lightweighted wine of crunchy red fruit accents and a multitude of layers bound to a gentle tannic twine. There is no dried grape influence at all.

I also liked the Tedeschi Valpolicella Lucchine 2022 and Bertani Valpolicella Classico Le Miniere di Novare Bertani Cru 2021 All of these wines are interchangeable stylistically with cru Beaujolais and many a pinot noir at the table.

Speri and le Ragose, too, offer delicious, straightforward Classico, although it was Speri’s Valpolicella Ripasso Classico 2021 that really impressed. The wine is passed over Amarone skins just once (rather than twice as the DOCG permits), facilitating a subtle pickup of darker fruit allusions muddled with dried fennel, mint, tobacco and a ping of alpine herb.

Carlo Speri suggests that excessive dried grape influence, be it ripasso or full appassimento styles, too often obscures the freshness of Valpolicella. He says that good Ripasso “ameliorates Valpolicella with a little weight, while rediscovering the marrow of the style.” While I don’t disagree, it is still difficult for the consumer to gauge what to expect when it comes to Ripasso. Some are ersatz Amarone, while others are crunchy and effusive wines with a little more weight than Valpolicella or Valpolicella Superiore.

As for Amarone, the style is inherently rich by virtue of the way it is made, with dried grapes high in sugar levels and a greater ratio of solids to juice. This dynamic attenuates a slow fermentation into an incantation of darker fruit allusions, anise, balsamic and dried herb, often evocative of the snowcapped peaks on the horizon. Power is unavoidable.

Yet while some drinkers still relish burl, a growing segment seek respite in fresher iterations. Older-school Amarone (as far as Amarone can be “old school,” given that it has only been around since the 1950s) is capacious and decadent, marked with considerable residual sugar, gritty tannins, mahogany aromas conferred by long barrel aging and a whiff of porcini due to botrytis that has set during the drying process, often due to poor ventilation or insouciance on behalf of the maker. Consuming this ilk of Amarone can be more akin to eating, rather than drinking wine.

More contemporary Amarone, including recent iterations from Bertani, Tedeschi and Soave maestro Gini, glean precision and redder-fruited vitality from cleaner grapes devoid of botrytis, longer macerations with gentler agitation and shorter time in cask. Intrinsic to this process is the ventilation during the drying process. Tedeschi goes an additional step, using dehumidifiers to stave off botrytis and hygienic plastic drying trays, rather than more traditional wooden or bamboo used elsewhere.

These producers tend to dry their fruit for shorter periods, too, while sourcing from Illasi, an eastern subregion put on the map by powerhouse winery Dal Forno. Illasi is an elevated, exposed and well-ventilated area, less prone to botrytis and capable of physiologically ripe grapes at lower alcohols. The geology is a meld of calcareous outcrops with a typically regional glacial-volcanic substrata. While Illasi is often frowned upon by traditionalists in the Classico zone, I found many wines to be excellent.

The patriarch of Le Ragose, Piero Galli, together with his winemaker daughter, Marta, are defenders of the faith in larger casks, long macerations on the skins and nourishing, highly complex wines devoid of botrytis’ malignant notes. Their Le Ragose Amarone della Valpolicella Classico Riserva 2006 is a tour de force and the qualitative equal of the esteemed Giuseppe Quintarelli Amarone della Valpolicella Classico 2015.

Interestingly, while many producers in Illasi continue to train their vines in the Guyot system, a fashionable enterprise of the 1990s to 2000s, many producers, including Speri, for example, are shifting back to pergola across the Valpolicella region. At Le Ragose and Quintarelli, the traditional varieties are lifted high in this way. Pergola is a harbinger of levity and finesse, allowing for shading, prolonged ripening and less humidity amid the bunches, while mitigating disease pressures. It is a bulwark against a warming climate, helping to avoid the overripe wines of years past. What is old is new again.

As for the white wines of Veneto, Prosecco is the most important in terms of sheer volume, but the most exciting region is indisputably Soave. Soave is an attractive, fortressed town, nestled into the hillsides of the central Veneto, planted to cultivars garganega and the increasingly fashionable trebbiano di Soave. The zone was expanded with the creation of the DOC in 1968, as high-level production shifted from the steep, hillside vineyards of the Classico zone to the fertile alluvial plains that abut the Adige River. As with a raft of anodyne pinot grigio, bulk Soave continues to be made from these lower-lying plains.

Yet the wines that captivated me come from higher up, particularly from the friable volcanic tuffo, strewn in parts with basalt. Volcanic soils comprise the dominant geology in the eastern subzone of Monteforte d’Alpone. Less common reaches of limestone are found throughout the warmer western subzone, imparting a mineral pungency to the wines. Here, by virtue of terraces full of vertiginous and old vines – some octogenarians – yields are inherently lower than the generous permitted norm.

Today, Soave must be a minimum of 70 percent garganega and up to 30 percent trebbiano di Soave, the latter comprising less than 5 percent of plantings. Mercifully, the lousy trebbiano di Toscana has been abolished. Chardonnay, pinot bianco or sauvignon may also be used. None of my top wines, however, contained any of these international grapes.

While there is also a somewhat nebulous Superiore rung to the Soave hierarchy, better producers in the Classico zone crop to lower yields than the Superiore strictures while often ignoring the nomenclature altogether. As with elsewhere, there is a growing predilection for single-vineyard wines. With that, the entire region has been divvied into 47 subzones within which top crus have been identified, the majority within the Cassico zone. These cru, or single-vineyard names such as Pieropan’s brilliant duo Calvarino and La Rocca, may appear on labels.

Top producers include Gini, Suavia, Pieropan, Inama and Pra, where I tasted on my recent journey. To this I would add Cantina Filippi, a fine source of textural wines that, at least on this occasion, I was unable to visit. To cite individual wines is a proverbial minefield of options, but also trepidations. I say this because I was privy to as many brilliant, aged expressions as I was tensile, immaculately poised, younger wines. All said, to drink fine Soave as a young wine or with five to eight years of age is a great pleasure, placing the best expressions firmly within the pantheon of Italy's finest white wines.

I love the culture at Gini. Claudio Gini plies an opus of texture. Phenolic pucker and the breadth of larger-format wood serve as structural attributes of the top wines, as much as garganega's inherently fresh acidity. Gini’s Salvarenza Vecchie Vigna 2020 hails from the oldest vines in the region, pre-phylloxera to 140 years. The fruit is often flecked with botrytis, exotic and profound, although the wine is dry.

The older wines at Gini, too, particularly the single cru La Frosca 2013, are outstanding. The Recioto di Soave Classico Col Foscarin 2016, an appassimento wine boasting the porcini breadth and roasted chestnut allure of age, is tear-inducing. This is a sweet style that I prefer to anything from Sauternes by virtue of its high acidity and savory, palpably dry finish. Among sweet wines, the quality is matched only by great German riesling and a similar uncanny capacity to finish “dry,” despite abundant sugar levels.

As a side note, Gini also crafts an outstanding pinot noir, Campo all More, planted to 10,000 vines per hectare. It is among the best of the Veneto and would make for a great curio in a blind tasting.

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Suavia, too, is a historic estate. The three sisters who run it today have shifted gears to one of a reductive precision, preferring cool tank fermentations to oak, to "allow the volcanic energy to run,” as they put it. They have commissioned precise geological studies, allowing for comprehension of the optimal physiological ripening window of each plot, ideal harvesting times depending on vintage and the appropriate approach to vinification.

Suavia is the strongest regional champion, too, of trebbiano di Soave, an earlier-ripening variety than garganega and one charged with higher levels of natural acidity, auguring well for climate change. It is bottled as Masififtti as a straight rendition and is invariably brilliant. Here are wines of detail, mineral pungency and rapier-like freshness. As at Gini, I was privy to many aged wines, attesting to quality Soave’s capacity to age, at least across the mid-term. Yet it was the Castellaro 2020 that gave me goosebumps! A propitious plot within the Carbonare site, this is the inaugural release, and it is among the finest white wines of Italy.

Veneto's future is bright. There is great opportunity to cultivate a niche for certain red wines, at least those that are digestible, lighter weight and energetic, particularly quality Valpolicella. The best fit the remit of contemporary drinking trends, while boasting fealty to place and a tradition that predates Amarone – a halfway house between straight-shooting Valpo and the thrilling Recioto della Valpolicella. Meanwhile, Soave is only growing in stature. Today the wines from the best addresses are entrenched within the pantheon of Italy’s very best.

– Ned Goodwin MW, Senior Editor

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