Ripasso is often called “baby Amarone.” I’ll be honest: I can’t remember anyone saying this to me at a table or in a wine shop. This nickname shows up constantly in wine writing and almost nowhere else. That’s exactly why I wanted to dig into where it comes from, rather…
Two nights, two great wineries, Lake Iseo and plenty of Franciacorta. Here’s how I’d plan a wine weekend without turning it into a tasting marathon.
There is a wine auction happening in Milan, and some of the bottles on the list look less like something you open with dinner and more like something you discuss with your accountant. Nothing here touches the truly absurd numbers on my list of the world’s most expensive wines, but…
Ripasso and Amarone both come from Valpolicella in Veneto. Both lean on the same traditional grapes, mainly Corvina, Corvinone, and Rondinella. They can sit right next to each other on a wine shop shelf and look equally Italian. They still hand you two completely different evenings. One is richer than…
Ripasso is what happens when Valpolicella decides it wants a little more drama. Regular Valpolicella is bright, fresh, full of sour-cherry energy. Amarone is richer, warmer, and considerably more intense. Ripasso sits comfortably between the two. It carries more body and depth than ordinary Valpolicella. It’s usually easier to drink…
For years, alcohol-free wine had exactly one hard problem, and it wasn’t the alcohol. It was the wine. You could remove the alcohol easily enough. Design a nice label, print 0.0% somewhere reassuringly large, and tell everyone this was the future of drinking. Then somebody tasted it. Too sweet, too…
If Italian sparkling wine is having a decent year while everything else struggles, there’s an obvious explanation. Prosecco. It’s always Prosecco, the bottle that conquered brunch, colonized the aperitivo hour. The one that convinced half the world that adding orange liquid to bubbles counts as a personality. Except Prosecco is…
Imagine having a genuinely good harvest and being told: excellent, now don’t sell all of it. That’s more or less what’s happening in Valpolicella this year. The 2026 harvest started early, nearly two weeks ahead of the historical average. Corvina is already in. Corvinone and Rondinella are close behind. Despite…
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