The colour
is a dark ruby, impenetrable. The wine needs to breath and breath and breath, much more
than I allowed it to. As a result, the nose took ages to develop the wonderful
jammy black fruits and plum, together with the oaky notes, a touch of leather, the marvellous hint of dark chocolate and perhaps some cloves too. Overall,
nose is (moderate to) intense, fine and complex. It has a powerful, spicy character.
In the mouth there is an initial sweetness of dark and jammy red fruits, always
supported by a consistent acidity, which doesn't come later but is actually parallel to the fruity notes, following them all along the tasting. At the
end the taste make a smooth turn. It is a strange, astonishing effects. The
sweet and fresh fruitiness of the beginning slowly fades. There is a moment in
which the acidity dominates. Then the tannin steps in, carpeting all the back
palate with a soft and elegant astringency, which smoothly mingles with the
acidity, producing a succulent after-taste. It is at this point that a bitter,
dark chocolaty flavours steps in, reproducing the exact sensation that a bite of proper 80% fondente can produce. The impressive thing is that everything is
still there: the freshness of the fruit, though much more subtle, still pops
in. Their sweetness too, still lingers in, in
dialectic engagement with the chocolaty bitterness. The acidity is always there
too, proverbial scaffolding of the whole experience.
This is a
wonderful wine, certainly not cheap but reasonably priced (18£), which reproduces some of Amarone’s sensations without however
being a mere low-key imitation of the more famous (and pricey) relative, but
rather showing its real character, as an original member of the corvina family (80% Corvina and 20% Syrah). The wine can age and age. Cannot even imagine how Allegrini's Amarone could be.
