The Wine: Valpolicella DOC 2020
Brigaldara Valpolicella DOC is a red wine made from a blend of 55% Corvina, 25% Corvinone, and 20% Rondinella grapes from 40-50-year-old vines; vinification in stainless steel. This is a great medium to light red wine, bright cherry on the nose, nice acidity, lively palate that some call crunchy. I was born and raised in Valpo, this wine is home to me.
The Winery: Brigaldara
A thousand years of history, one hundred and twenty hectares of property - forty-seven of which are planted with vines - distributed in three different areas of Verona: Valpolicella Classica, Valpantena and Eastern Valpolicella. A historic family, the Cesari, that has owned the villa and the surrounding land since 1928, who is committed to the enhancement of a rich and heterogeneous property. A team of young winemakers and agronomists dedicated to the study and customization of each intervention in the vineyard, to enhance the terroirs and microterroirs that make up the different souls of the wines that are here produced. (source: Brigaldara)
The Region: Veneto
Veneto is one of the most important wine regions of Italy, located in the North Eastern corner of the Italian peninsula. It borders with Trentino-Alto Adige (north), Friuli-Venezia Giulia (north-east), Emilia-Romagna (south), and Lombardy (west).
The capital of Veneto is Venice, which is also its most populous city, followed by Verona, Padua, Vicenza, Treviso, and Rovigo. The east coast of Lake Garda, the biggest Italian lake, is part of Veneto and so is the tract of Alpine foothills called Venetian Prealps.
Veneto is the leading Italian region for the quantity of wine produced – even though wine-producing regions such as Piedmont, Tuscany, Lombardy, Puglia, and Sicily all have bigger territories.
Some of its most famous wines are Amarone della Valpolicella, Valpolicella, Soave, and of course Prosecco. Other less known but equally delicious wines are Recioto della Valpolicella, Recioto di Gambellara, Raboso del Piave, and Bardolino.
Veneto’s main characteristic is perhaps the great variety of wine types produced, obtained mostly from indigenous grape varietals – Corvina, Glera, and Garganega being the most common.
This is due as much to its specific geography and climate as it is to rather peculiar winemaking techniques such as the grape drying technique employed to make Amarone della Valpolicella, Veneto’s most famous red wine.