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FINE WINE

Wine’s greatest mistake

At dinner the other day, a bottle of Amarone della Valpolicella fetched more attention and appreciation than the other wines served at the table, which included a famous New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and a perfectly respectable Chateauneuf du Pape. It is something I have witnessed more than once before. Those introduced to it for the first time, see it as something of a revelation, others acquainted with the wine, wish it were easier to acquire.

There is something in Amarone that attracts the Indian palette. Could it be because it’s high in alcohol? (After all, we are a whiskey-drinking nation that prefers even our beers turbo-charged.) Could it be because it’s so big, rich and dominant? (Surely, if there is one wine that resists being overshadowed by the most pungent of foods, this must be it. In curry country, this couldn’t be such a bad thing.) Or is it simply because we have such exquisitely fine taste? (All right, that was not a serious question.)

Whatever the truth, I suspect Indians would be drinking a lot more Amarone were it more affordable and available. If Cabernet-based Bordeaux is a wine of arresting complexity, then Amarone is a wine of intriguing contradictions. It is dry but it retains an unmistakable touch of sweetness. For a modern wine (being all of some five decades old), it has an earthy, elemental and comfortingly old-fashioned character. For a big brute of a wine, it is smooth as velvet. If it were a cartoon character, it would be Shrek, unknowing of its own strength and endearingly accepting of its lack of chic. A sophisticated primitive, a civilised brute.

Amarone is produced with the same grapes as Valpolicella — principally Corvina, with additions of Rondinella and Molinara (and infrequently also Negrara). It is the process that sets it apart. The grapes are left to hang on the vine a little longer, the extra-ripe grapes are set out to dry in racks for months, and the juice extracted from the shrivelled rasinated fruit is aged in barrels to produce an opulent, highly concentrated wine that explodes with the flavour of dark burnt fruit and bittersweet chocolate.

Traditionally, this method produced a sweet wine. The red dessert wine Recioto della Valpolicella is still made, but the interesting thing is that the dry Amarone owed its existence to oversight.

The story goes that in the early 1900s, a winemaker who was making Recioto forgot his wine in a barrel, leaving it to ferment all the way to dryness.

Amarone (or big, bitter one) was born, but it wasn’t until the middle of that century that it began being sold commercially. What was created by accident has been developed over the years to become the worlds most luscious and beguiling reds. No wonder they call it wine’s greatest mistake.

mukund@thehindu.co.in

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