Amarone della Valpolicella - Colle Cerè

Colle Cerè's Amarone della Valpolicella Classico DOCG is a wine that leaves no room for uncertainty — 16.5% alcohol, 60 months in large Slavonian oak casks, 90 days of drying in a traditional drying room. Numbers that tell the story of a radical and courageous production approach, that of a winery that has chosen not to compromise on the concentration and longevity of its Amarone.

Colle Cerè is a winery in Valpolicella Classica that produces wine using a rigorous traditional method — the 4,000 bottles produced annually of this Amarone testify to an artisanal approach that prioritizes quality over quantity. The blend is the classic one for the appellation: Corvina 50%, Corvinone 40%, Rondinella 10% — three native Veronese grape varieties that together create one of Italy's most complex and long-lived wines.

The grapes are hand-selected and dried for 90 days in a drying room, losing more than 35% of their weight and naturally concentrating sugars, polyphenols, and aromas slowly and progressively. Fermentation is long and patient, and aging takes place for 60 months — five years — in large 20-hectoliter Slavonian oak casks, the traditional choice that ensures progressive oxygenation without imparting new-oak notes to the wine. This is followed by another 6 months of bottle aging before release. The 2020 vintage, particularly favorable in Valpolicella, produced grapes with exceptional concentration and phenolic ripeness, which are fully expressed in this Amarone.

On the nose, it is powerful and complex: black cherry and sour cherry preserve, blackberry, bitter cocoa, pipe tobacco, dried violet, sweet spices, leather, and a deep mineral and balsamic undertone. On the palate, it is imposing — massive tannins already extraordinarily integrated after the long aging, an enveloping glyceric sweetness that balances the alcoholic power, an acidic freshness that provides verticality and longevity, and an exceptionally long finish that evolves for minutes with notes of concentrated black fruit, spices, and minerality. Serve at 18-20°C after decanting for at least 2 hours. It expresses its best qualities between 5 and 20 years from the harvest.