Amarone della Valpolicella - Contrada Palui

Contrada Palui's Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG is one of the most discussed and anticipated wines of Valpolicella's new generation - an Amarone that international critics have called "the denomination's most elegant turning point," produced by an Alto Adige winemaker who chose to do things radically differently from everyone else.

Hannes Pichler established his organic vineyard perched on a hill at 500 meters above sea level - the highest point in the entire Valpolicella DOC. Thanks to its position, the vineyards receive sunlight all day while the Lessinian Alps immediately to the north provide cool mountain air that preserves the grapes' lively acidity. The result is a unique, unrepeatable terroir - white limestone, black basalt and flint in proportions found nowhere else in the denomination, on natural pasture that had never been planted with vines or treated with chemicals.

Hannes Pichler bottles only what nature offers him at 500 meters above sea level: light, lively red fruit with intense acidity. His 2018 Amarone had only 0.8 g/l of residual sugar - a figure that says everything about the philosophy of Contrada Palui: not extreme concentration, not alcoholic power as an end in itself, but the purest and most transparent expression of the terroir through the drying process.

The grapes are hand-selected in small crates and left to dry for 1.5-2 months in a covered, ventilated space - a short drying period compared with the denomination's standard 90 days, concentrating the aromas and structure without turning the wine into something different from the territory it comes from. The blend is precise: Corvina 65%, Corvinone 25%, Rondinella 10% - only the traditional native varieties of Verona, deliberately avoiding the Bordeaux varieties that almost everyone in the area uses today.

On the nose, it is elegant and surprisingly fresh for an Amarone - lively, precise red fruit, cherry and raspberry, dried flowers, light spices, alpine herbs, ferrous minerality and a balsamic hint that directly evokes the vineyard's flint and basalt soils. On the palate, it is powerful but razor-sharp - 16° of natural alcohol that feels weightless thanks to the vibrant acidity preserved by the altitude, dense tannins already made elegant by mixed maturation, a freshness that challenges every convention of Amarone and a long, vertical finish with notes of red fruit, minerals and spices.