WTN: Six Amarones

[Jenise]

Our neighborhood tasting group explored Amarone last month. Forty people attended, and these six wines were served blind.

2004 Tommaso Bussola, $57
Medium bodied with a strikingly good balance between sweet and savory. Great aromatics and delineation, and admirably complex. Group favorite by a wide margin, and my second place which says a lot about the wine since more often than not the wines this group loves most are the wines I like least. After this though, we quickly parted company in the usual ways:

2004 Tedeschi, $40
This and the next wine were the two sweetest, both in the nose and on the palate, which was undoubtedly the source of their popularity. Full bodied with good length. Group 2nd place, my 5th or co-last in that I didn't really care for either.

2001 Vigneti del Gaso, $44
The darkest, sweetest and most saturated of all the wines with lots of cola and brown sugar flavors amid the slick black and blue fruit and low acidity. Internationalized, and more a cocktail wine than for food. You could really taste the alcohol--I thought it most likely to be the 2003. Blind, one could almost mistake it for an Aussie shiraz. Group 3rd place, my last place.

2004 Zenato, $59
Dark fruit with a good minerally presence, some toast and even a note of wood-cured bacon. Interesting and tasty, with long term potential I think, if seemingly overpriced compared to the rest. Group 4th, my 3rd.

2003 Tenuta Sant Antonio, $40
Probably the lightest bodied of all the wines and more toward red fruit than black. A bit simple on the palate but lively, clean and enjoyable. Group 5th, my 4th.

2004 Bertani 'Arvedi', $48
Exciting and complex nose with a lot of boysenberry fruit, spice box, tobacco and earth. On the palate, medium-bodied with minerals, spiced fruit, rum and baked yams. For my tastes, perfect acidity and fine tannins that should reward further aging, and the only wine of the night that I truly loved and which brought my world back into balance as it made everything right in the world again: my 1st place choice, group's last.

Do you find a great many foods that amarone is the best accompaniment. I read your post and realized that my large eclectic wine collection contains no amarone. I can't remember when I've ever been to some ones house who did a dish served with an amarone and said wow, that's a great match.

Jenise,

I've very rarely had Amarone.
It looks like you had a wonderful tasting.

Could you please share a sort of synthesis with us?

Did the wines taste "sweet" or Port like?
Did they seem really acoholic?
What about aging potential?

What food would you serve them with ideally?

Was there very much of a common thread (similarity) between the wines?

All the best,
Alex

I have a few 97 & 99. They age very nicely. The spicy notes that are so dominant in their youth soften with time and they take on a lovely earthy complexity. They go well with Italian pot roasts and if nothing else steak on the bbq.

I like Amarones a lot, and have a selection back to 1971. They last amazingly well - I've tasted good wines from the 60s recently.

My favourite matching (drinking them on their own is a good alternative) is a hard cheese and nuts.

I think that folk unfamiliar with Amarone would do well to do a little research first.

Some Amarones do age well---generally those intended to do so. Not all are so intended though. There are, basically, two styles; one is fruity, raisiny, rich and intended for mid-term consumption, and ready to release its perfumey qualities within a couple of years (remember, Amarone is required to spend an impressive amount of time in (large) barrel so it's already had some time to settle in and concentrate).

Then there's the built-for-the-long-term style, which is totally different, with some requiring quite a few yeas before they really come close to what they are supposed to be.

As to Amarone with food, there is a risotto with Amarone that can be great. And Amarone can be used for braising meats. And though no one in the US is likely to make it, there's a tradition in northern Italy of Amarone with horsemeat. I don't think of Amarone as a food wine. In Italy it's one of those truly amazing 'vino da meditazione' wines, intended to stand all by itself. And I think Amarones---the substantial ones especially---are best that way: all by themselves.

The best Amarone I've ever had? Sitting in the Piazza dal Erbe in Verona, watching the peopl go by, and carefully studying the faded murals on the buildings as the sun sets on a gentle fall day. Second best: Pouring an Amarone into a glass and sitting it on the windowsill in the sun on a bitterly cold windy day in a little cove on Friday Harbor in the San Juan Island; after about thirty minutes the air was perfumed with Amarone. Best air freshener in the world.

[Jenise]

Do you find a great many foods that amarone is the best accompaniment. I read your post and realized that my large eclectic wine collection contains no amarone. I can't remember when I've ever been to some ones house who did a dish served with an amarone and said wow, that's a great match.

Lou, the best food match for amarone that I've had, where the wine worked so well it was hard to imagine any other wine with it, was a roast duck with an unsweet brown sauce that was studded with fresh blueberries. A minerally and nicely evolved '95 Allegrini was also great about two years ago with a Miraton (layers of boiled beef, tomatoes, onions and anchovies baked together for a few hours then scooped onto torn chunks of crusty bread). But those are also two of the only experience I had matching amarone to food until the last six months, when someone in my neighborhood with whom I often share meals got bit by the amarone bug in general and by the Gaso listed above in particular. He bought cases of several different vintages, or at least seems to have, because whenever Gary shows up with a bottle of wine, he has one of those Gasos in tow. So I've now had amarone with lasagna, amarone with prime rib, and just last Thursday night, amarone with pork medallions in a sauce of armagnac, cream and sauteed apples (to which I'd brought a pinot noir which was easily the better match). The prime rib was probably the best match of all those (with an 04), but more because of it's youth than the fact that it was amarone and even in that case the amarone was bested at the job by young cabernets.

It can be most splendid, as Hoke details, but I wouldn't personally purchase any for early consumption, and I'd steere the ones I'd aged properly to braised foods and those involving cooked tomatoes.

The best Amarone I've ever had? Sitting in the Piazza dal Erbe in Verona, watching the peopl go by, and carefully studying the faded murals on the buildings as the sun sets on a gentle fall day.

Hoke,

That is absolutely perfect. Nice job conveying the experience.

[Jenise]

Did the wines taste "sweet" or Port like?
Did they seem really acoholic?
What about aging potential?

What food would you serve them with ideally?

Was there very much of a common thread (similarity) between the wines?

All the best,
Alex

Alex, amarone is basically a dry red wine, simply one that's intensified through an unusual process. And like all dry red table wines, some can be vinified sweeter and more portlike (which is what I was getting at when I compared one to an Aussie shiraz, though I realize that's a generalization not fair to all shirazes). Only one seemed, among this six, particularly alcoholic, but I am very situationally influenced and less likely to notice and complain of the abv among six 15% or so wines. It was far more apparent a few nights ago in the situation I described in another response, where an amarone followed a pinot and both were served with a delicate pork dish.

As for your last question, I did not find the wines very similar at all--the hand of the winemaker and the vintage variations were as evident as they would be with any other six like wines, and in fact, these were, from first sniff (I smell every wine before I taste any), very distinct and individualistic--much more so than sitting down to six glasses of young Washington cabernets would have been, say.

Jenise, if you will share with us the recipe for your "roast duck with an unsweet brown sauce that was studded with fresh blueberries," that dish will soon grace my dining room table and be accompanied by a 1998 or1999 Allegrini Amarone.

Does Bussola make an Amarone without the letters BG or TB? I thought they were either or, with the latter supposedly the finer?

[Jenise]

Does Bussola make an Amarone without the letters BG or TB? I thought they were either or, with the latter supposedly the finer?

Otto, no prior experience with the Bussola, and I wasn't the buyer of this set of wines. The names came straight off the handout. Can't help!

[Jenise]

Jenise, if you will share with us the recipe for your "roast duck with an unsweet brown sauce that was studded with fresh blueberries," that dish will soon grace my dining room table and be accompanied by a 1998 or1999 Allegrini Amarone.

Clint, no recipe. The dish is one I had in a little Left Bank bistro called Chez Gregory many years ago. I've recreated it at home since by simply roasting a duck by one of the usual methods, deglazing the browned bits with white wine and adding a roux to get to a brown gravy. Throw in a handful of blueberries just before serving, and you've got the dish. I sometimes add a little fresh rosemary, but that wasn't part of the original.

Six Amarones? Isn't that like advertising a six bassoon sextet?

Walt

I see your point, Walt. A few years ago I was planning a six-bottle blind Amarone tasting but then thought that might be too much bassoon so I went with three Amarones and three ripasso style valpolicellas. It worked out well. As I recall the Valpolacellas were good wines but the three Amarone ranked one, two and three with the group.

Jenise, that's close enough to a recipe to do the trick. Sounds good. Thank you.