WineLife365

Hey baby don’t you worry, even though the road is rocky
I’ll be coming home to you again
And if you thought that I was lost, I have to bury my cross
Now I’m free from all these chains.  Stephen Marley

There’s a whole big world of wine out there just waiting to be discovered.  As I looked over my own experiences from last year, one whole big world that I sure was missing out on was Italy.  Italy is home to some of the oldest wine producing regions in the world.  Long before the Romans started planting vines, there were the Etruscans and Greeks. Two thousand years later, Italy has become one of the world’s foremost producers, responsible for approximately one-fifth of the world’s overall wine production.  

Located in the province of Verona, Italy, east of Lake Garda is the very hilly and marble rich soil of Valpolicella.  Winemaking has existed in this Italian region since the time of the ancient Greeks.  The name Valpolicella is derived from a Latin and Greek mixture, which translated in English means “Valley of Cellars.” Today, the “Valley of Cellars” economy rests heavily on the production of wine.  The hallmark or signature wine of this region is the recognizable full-bodied style red wine known as Amarone.

However, one not so familiar style of red wine from this Italian region is Ripasso.  Ripasso comes from the verb, ripassare, meaning to “pass over” or to do something again.  The process of making Ripasso wine is by first taking the leftover skins, pulp, and seeds of a previously made Amarone wine, then having this liquid go through a second fermentation that can sometimes last for as long as 3 weeks. The result of this technique gives the wine an increased level of alcohol that clocks in around 14%, yet compared to a traditional Amarone, Ripasso wine will be a bit softer, fruitier and less tannic in its youth. The process of creating a Ripasso wine only occurs in exceptional vintage years. Think of Ripasso as being the “Baby Amarone” that you drink today.  The best part about this style of wine is that it costs a fraction of what you’d pay for an Amarone.  

I recently had the pleasure of trying one of these “Baby Amarones” and sure was kicking myself for passing them over time and time again in the past.  The 2006 Tezza Corte Majoli Valpolicella Ripasso is a terrific example of “Old World” winemaking with just the right splash of “New World” style to liven it up a bit.  This wine is made with a blend of estate grown grapes, mostly Corvina. The double fermentation or ‘Ripasso’ method gives this wine big fruit flavors that reminds one of ‘New World’ wine, but being Italian, there’s plenty of dried cherry and rich spicy flavors that let drinkers know where this baby was born.

We paired the 2006 Tezza Corte Majoli Valpolicella Ripasso with a lobster mac-n-cheese dish that was, in a nutshell, pretty fantastico!  The 2006 Tezza Corte Majoli Valpolicella Ripasso is an outstanding value for under $15.

3 Stars out of 4.