Veneto reds boast a storied past

2010 Bolla Valpolicella Ripasso Classico Superiore: A best-buy ripasso for its many-layered aromas and flavors. $16

2010 Sartori di Verona Rosso Veronese “Regolo”: All corvina; if you’ve ever had strawberries from the woods, this is that in the form of wine; soft tannins, good acidity for food. $19

2010 Inama Rosso Carmenere “Piu”: A really neat carmenere from the hills outside Verona; the “piu” (“more”) is softening merlot at 30 percent; super value in dense, deeply flavored red. $20

2009 Secondo Marco Valpolicella Ripasso Classico: The favorite Ripasso of the tastings for its unfolding layers of scents and flavors (sour cherry, leather, wet stone, espresso, whew!). $25

2011 Allegrini Palazzo della Torre Rosso Veronese: The great new twist on modern ripasso in which the winery sets aside a portion of grapes for appassimento very early in harvest then adds them to the regularly picked grapes for a fresher, more lively red than Ripasso typically becomes. $25

2012 Cesari Valpolicella Superiore Ripasso “Mara”: Various winemaking and aging regimens conspire for complexity; one delicious ripasso. $25

2012 Buglioni Spumante Brut Rose “Il Vigliacco”: Made of molinara, a grape once used but now forbidden in Amarone production (hence the winery’s nickname for it which means “coward,” a finger pointed at the authorities); a dry pink sparkler with a lot of unfolding flavor. $30

2009 Cesari Corvina “Jema”: Find out what pure (100 percent) corvina tastes like in this earthy, softly tannic, deeply flavored red. $45

2010 Tenuta Sant’Antonio Amarone della Valpolicella “Selezione Antonio Castagnedi”: As Amarone goes, a terrific buy; chocolate-covered cherries without the sugar; hints of licorice, coffee, spice and wood; wonderful for all it gives for relatively little outlay. $45-$50

2009 Zenato Amarone della Valpolicella Classico: One of the great Amarone, year after year; Italians call Amarone a wine of “contemplazione” or “meditazione” because it is worth intellectual savoring; this is that, all opening curtains and waves of scents, flavors and textures of dark red fruits, spices and woods, richly rendered and caressing tannins. $50-$70

If your wine store does not carry these wines, ask for one similar in style and price.

Veneto, in northeast Italy, is one of 20 regions that make up the country. It is its most prolific winemaker, and boasts the greatest percentage of top-classed wine. But a key technique for much of that cutting-edge winemaking is far up the blade.

Veneto excels at a practice called appassimento, or grape drying, that is more than 3,000 years old, mentioned by both Hesiod and Homer in their writings and a commonplace in imperial Roman wine talk.

Why make wine out of partially dried grapes anyway? A clue comes by way of wine’s nickname in England until the early 1800s, “the sour.” Until the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, when winemakers learned (or, more properly, were able) to bottle wine and stopper bottles with corks and employ hygienic winemaking practices, every single batch of wine made since winemaking began in earnest some 6,000 years ago was spoiled, oxidized, vinegary, acrid and well nigh unpalatable within two or three months of its birth.

But it still contained alcohol, and our ingenious kind used every method possible to either mask the nasties or attempt to stave them off: additions of ground chalk, wood ash, resin, lye-ash, marble dust, lime and every conceivable herb or spice. And they either boiled down wine to a concentrate to which they later added water or made it out of dried or partially dried grapes. Such dried-grape wines were sweeter, more potent and more durable than wines made from “regular” grapes and, so, became highly prized and were more expensive than “the sour.” All the great wines of antiquity — Falernum, the so-called Romneys from Rome, the legendary Opimian vintage of 121 B.C. — were dried-grape or concentrated wines.

Even more interesting is that when commerce in wine developed in Europe from the late Middle Ages on, dried-grape wines were those most sought-after by the burgeoning bourgeoisie. Then as now, special wines were the wines of the upper middle class.

Today, some of Veneto’s appassimento wines, especially Amarone della Valpolicella, are also among top-valued wines among those who know wine. The red wine Valpolicella, its blends and various styles, make up a full one-third of the production of Veneto.

Valpolicella’s prized grapes are corvina and a genetic relation, corvinone. Both are thick-skinned and, with loose bunches of large berries, perfect for drying. They also ripen late, developing lots of sugar (their names come from Venetian dialect, “cruina,” unripe, or “ripens late”).

Regular Valpolicella, of course, is also made, but it’s nothing of “the sour,” being the beneficiary of modern advances in winemaking. It and its brother Bardolino taste and smell of dark cherries and are gentle yet lively on the palate. Valpolicella is the great everyday red wine of Veneto.

But when tinkered with grapes alla appassimento, Valpolicella morphs into two wines even more valued: Valpolicella ripasso and the famed Amarone, the former a sort of “baby Amarone” — a mix, of a sort, of regular Valpolicella and the spent matter from Amarone winemaking, once again fermented together.