Cantina Valpantena `Torre del Falasco` Valpolicella Superiore Ripasso

A powerful wine with bundles of primary fruit character, nutmeg spice and a supportive structure of soft, ripe tannins. Raisins and candied peel notes are layered with rounded, ripe cherry goodness. Black cherries and plums backed up with by hints of mocha and deeper dark chocolate notes. 

Run by Luca Degani since 1995, the Cantina Valpantena is now one of Italy’s best co-operatives, with 700 hectares of vineyard that produce excellent quality fruit. Matt Thomson makes some of the Alpha Zeta wines here and has worked closely with them since 1999.

Known as the ‘Valley of God’ to the ancient Greeks, the Valpantena is well known for its quality red wines, due partly to the limestone soils, but also because of the cool breeze that blows down the valley from the foothills of the Dolomites.

The grapes for the Valpolicella Ripasso are grown on the flat vineyards belonging to the co-operative that lie just off the Verona hills, where soils are chalky and poor. The vines are Guyot trained and sit 100 - 300 metres above sea level. The wine is a blend of two traditional Valpolicella varieties - Corvina and Corvinone. 

After the grapes were dry, they were destemmed and crushed, then fermented in temperature-controlled, stainless-steel tanks at 22-28°C. Maceration lasted 10 days. Once fermentation was complete, a second fermentation took place on the skins of the Torre del Falasco Amarone in the traditional 'ripasso' method. The wine was then filtered and clarified before being aged for two years in stainless-steel barrels.