Wine tasting at Le Marognole

Today we drove over to a neighboring valley to visit a winery. Mom doesn’t drink but was interested to learn about the process. Valpolicella uses several grapes— Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella. The classic wine is fermented fresh (the juice is used right away) whereas for the Amarone, the grapes are dried until about half the water is gone then the concentrated juice is fermented until dry. Traditionally these dried grapes were for a dessert wine (Recioto) but in the 1930s someone accidentally didn’t stop fermentation. Amarone was born. The wine is full bodied and high in alcohol. Surprisingly the wine is not hot. We started in the grape drying room, then passed on to the fermentation rooms with their stainless-steel tanks and ended in the historic cellar. From there we saw a part of the vineyard while we tasted the wine then we saw the new cellar. It seems like many of these growers used to sell grapes to big producers but in the last twenty or so years they now keep their grapes for their own wines. On our way home we visited an amazing salumeria for getting some cold cuts and cheese.Read more