Score: 93/100
This Amarone wine by Onepiò Winery is made from 80% corvina/corvinone, and 20% rondinella grapes from the Valpolicella Classica production area of Verona in Northern Italy.
Terroir & Winemaking Facts
The grapes for this Amarone where sourced from 5-ha vineyards (12 acres) on red and dark-brown soils with a solid calcareous and clay content and presence of stones like it is typical in the Valpolicella wine region. The climate is influenced by the Lessini hills that protect the vineyards from cold air coming from the North. Lake Garda Lake to the West mitigates temperatures especially during winter.
After fermentation, the wine was aged for 60 months in French oak wine barrels (225 lt) and a further 12 months in stainless steel tanks.
Tasting Notes
This Amarone wine comes in a very dark red color, dense and deep, although you can still see through its dark red color with orange hues, showing some signs of evolution from its 7 years of age.
The nose is very deep, and pretty intense, although a little volatile at first. We’re here with a powerful wine, obviously!
The aromatic profile is filled with exuberant prune liqueur, and ripe sour cherry fruit notes that literally jump out of the glass and capture your senses and attention. Darker notes of vanilla and licorice make this world of intense fruit scents feel deeper, more savory, and yummier too. Black pepper and chili bring a lifted spiciness.
There IS a lot going on to the nose, and you could spend a long time breaking it down into a myriad of aromas. That’s if you take the time to get passed the bursting fruit notes and slight volatility, and the exuberant spiciness.
Put the wine in your mouth, and the palate strikes by its smoothness, but also its sheer power of flavor intensity.
It is smooth and feeling soft and round. Yes, there are tannins, but they remain discrete during most of the tasting, coated by the round body and oily texture. They only show up more obviously towards the finish with a velvety grippy feel.
What strikes too are the immensely powerful and tasty flavors of black olive, sour cherry with blackberry liqueur. An incredible combination of sweet/sour notes, although it is mainly very fruity and bursting with warm alcohol and fruit notes, like a liqueur really.
Stunning complexity, there is a great deal of layered flavors developing on the palate, and every sip seems to reveal ones you (well, I) had not identified prior.
Long, warm, and layered finish…
Overall
A rather stunning and very characterful Amarone wine, filled with warm fruity goodness, and many layers of complexity and depth. It is not for the faint-hearted though, but for lovers of powerful reds bursting in liqueur and sweet spices flavors, and an authentic expression of somewhat rustic Valpolicella grapes.
If you forgive this wine’s imperfections however, you will be here with a characterful and indeed very memorable tasting experience, precisely because it is not as precise and perfect as many other wines.
A wine of genuine and authentic character.
Enjoy 🙂
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