Valpolicella Superiore and Ripasso 2003-2204 | Wine Surf - Giornale di Enogastronimia: inchieste, interviste e degustazioni

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25/10/2006

Valpolicella Superiore and Ripasso 2003-2204

I’ll try for you an incredible experiment never seen before: I’ll write for you an entire article about Valpolicella without writing about Amarone. Unbelievable!!
Well, ok, maybe not that incredible, but still: I’ve been trying for so many years to tell the Valpolicella producers that their future is not Amarone but Valpolicella itself, specially in its more convinced version, the Superiore. That’s why our tastings were focused on this typology and on its step-brother one, the Ripasso, recently readmitted to legality after many years of court fights.
We tasted two very different vintages, 2003 and 2004, where the Ripasso typology was still officially kept hidden. At least on the labels that was, because in the wines we tasted we found that luckily, in the cellars, it was as popular as ever. I was particularly happy with this whole situation, and with the fact that the wines generally scored quite good reviews because I could almost imagine that the producers had been listening to the words of advice I gave them in the past.
But let’s proceed step by step. Who’d like to drink Valpolicella can choose between three different options: a fresh, youthful, early drinking wine (Valpolicella), a more structured wine that can be aged for a few years (Superiore) and an altogether “different” product, obtained by “soaking” the Amarone’s (or Recioto’s) pomace into a Superiore wine (Ripasso). Until a few years ago, the first wine was a souvenir-shop wine (with no offence meant for souvenir-shops), the second one lived off from the fame and glory of Amarone and the latter one was stuck into an unnerving oblivion in which everyone was boasting to produce it but in truth very few producers were able to (or could) produce it.
Today, a few years after a great job done by the consortium (and by the producers!) the situation is the following. You can still find Valpolicellas in souvenir-shops, but you can also find great easy drinking wines at entry price levels. The “Superiore” became really superior and seems to have found its own self: an important but not extreme red wine, well structured but also quite drinkable and enjoyable. This great achievement is somewhat disturbed by the performance of its step-brother, the Ripasso: one of the most schizophrenic wines on earth. On one hand in fact it is considered to be the Amarone of the poor, on the other hand it is seen as the Superiore of the rich. Someone means it as a more approachable version of the Superiore, someone else as a “free-standing” category, in which only the “Ripasso” word counts and being also a Valpolicella is something purely incidental.
This confusion is the true limit of the area: some of the wines tasted like Ripassos but the word is nowhere to be found on the label. Others do not taste like Ripassos but are sold as such. I reckon it is time to make a point. The technique of the Ripasso (i.e. the practice to re-ferment Superiores or Valpolicellas on the Amarone’s pomace) was not used to obtain more powerful wines, but to highlight the aromas and the nuances. A kind of Venetian version of the Tuscan “Governo”, from which the wines obtained were just perfectly ready to be enjoyed. Today the Ripasso is meant to give alcoholic strength and structure, and not those aromas and that subtlety that made of it an unique wine in the whole Italian production. This is a pity, and I do not think that the recent “liberalisation” of the Ripasso would help to improve the situation. I rather think that the one that will eventually loose from the new state of things will be the Superiore, that possibly will be pushed back into the same corner from where it recently came out.

These are only the doubts, but luckily the certainties are many more: entire flights of such pleasant Superiores are not easy to recall from past tastings. And we’re not only speaking of “correct” wines, but of pleasant, characterful, complex and long wines which also have very good prices.
There’s also a good side of the confusion amongst Ripasso and non-Ripasso wines: the differences between the two vintages were evened out. In 2003 the Ripasso helped to give aromatic complexity to the wines that might have lacked it, in 2004 it helped to give the wines solidity and texture.
To conlude we would definitely recommend to drink “Superiore” (with or without Ripasso), with the hope that someone’s greediness will not bring back this denomination in the nothingness where it used to be just a few years back. Oh, for what concerns Amarone 2002/2003 we will tell you about those shortly. Have faith.

Autore: Carlo Macchi

Degustazioni

Tasting of Valpolicella Superiore e Ripasso 2003-2004 27/09/2006

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Grande Fratello della vite. Siamo maturi, o quasi. Così ci dice la bilancia umana

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