Valorise Valpolicella Superiore, the wine that best expresses the Veneto region

When you say Valpolicella, the first wine that comes to mind is its great Amarone, the qualitative apex of a denomination capable of moving an oenological turnover of 600 million euros per year, and which, overall, in 2020 resisted the impact of the pandemic, yielding only -3.3% in value in wine sales. But now the Consortium is launching a project dedicated to the wine of the denomination that more than others expresses territoriality, namely Valpolicella, in its Superiore version. Because if Amarone is the “wine of method”, the drying (like Ripasso and Recioto) par excellence, Valpolicella Superiore, the Consortium stresses, is “the one that identifies symbiotically with the territory”, and that will be the focus of a new development project that debuts on June 24, with the digital event “Valpolicella Superiore - A Territory Opportunity”, which will connect producers, operators and national and international press for a focus for the first time entirely dedicated to the “youngest and freshest” denomination of the area.
“What we are beginning is an articulated process - explains the president of the Consortium, Christian Marchesini, to WineNews - which began a few months ago and was designed to enhance, above all, Valpolicella Superiore, which today represents 6% of the bottled wine of the Valpolicella system. It is a path that also begins with a questionnaire sent to the wineries, with which we asked them what points to insist on in order to improve and better identify Valpolicella Superiore. The idea of the Board of Directors of the Consortium is to say: we have done a great job on two wines, Amarone and Ripasso, which are strongly linked to a technique, the withering, which in Valpolicella has had a very important development both in quality and quantity, but we must also think about two wines that are the total expression of the territory, which are Valpolicella and Valpolicella Superiore. And Valpolicella Superiore must not only have the characteristic provided for by the disciplinary, that is a longer aging and half an alcoholic degree more than Valpolicella, but it must undertake a path that leads to a more marked identification of Valpolicella Superiore, that is an extremely elegant and fine wine, and that is positioned in the market of fine wines. This is the goal we set for ourselves and we will try to direct producers in this direction. It will not be easy, but I think the small size of what Valpolicella Superiore is today can help us”. There will be two sessions of “Valpolicella Superiore - A Territory Opportunity” which, on June 24, will be streamed live on Zoom and on the main social channels of the Consortium (Facebook and Instagram).
During the first one, the Consortium will present to press, trade and companies the first Valpolicella Annual Report, the complete dossier of production and climate trends of the last 50 years, as well as market trends. Among the contents there will also be the results of the internal survey on Valpolicella Doc Superiore carried out with the aim of identifying its stylistic, organoleptic and market profile and to outline the future prospects of this wine. The program also includes a special tasting of eight Valpolicella Doc Superiore wines (blindly selected by a technical commission), led by Gabriele Gorelli, the first Italian Master of Wine; Filippo Bartolotta, wine educator also known as “The Sommelier of the Stars” and JC Viens, journalist and Italian wine expert.
A path that looks to the future, and which starts from a present that, after difficult months, seems to be growing again: “we closed 2020 in line with 2019 - concludes Marchesini - and 2021 got off to a sparkling start, looking at the bottled wine data. In the first four months of 2021 (over the same period in 2020) Valpolicella grew by 10%, Ripasso by 15%, Amarone by as much as 35%. And what some consider to be a point of disadvantage for Amarone, namely its widespread presence in large-scale distribution and in the markets of Northern Europe, has actually proved to be a strong point with Covid. We are confident, without getting too excited, because as we have seen, things can change very quickly”.