Selections Mondiales des Vins 2024: Zenato’s the Amarone Classico della Valpolicella 2019 and the Ripassa received respectively a Grand Gold and a Gold Medal
The jewel of Zenato’s production, this wine is made from a selection of top grapes from Valpolicella Classica grown in Sant’Ambrogio township (Corvina, Rondinella, Oseleta, and Croatina).
The grapes are dried for 4 months and crushing is not carried out until January. Slow fermentation with skin contact follows and then the wine is aged for 36 months in large-format Slavonian casks.
It is then aged in bottle before being released
A majestic wine, intense and ethereal, with notes of bay leaf and distillate-cured cherries.
The impressive balance between all its components makes it ideal for long-term aging.
As soon as the dried grapes for the Amarone have completed fermentation, a top selection of Valpolicella grapes “passes over” (ripassa) the Amarone pomace, thus resulting in a second brief fermentation
This will result into a higher alcohol content, deeper color and rich flavor and aroma. After aging in French tonneaux for 18-20 months, the wine will spend other 6 months in bottle before release.
The process makes for a refined and concentrated wine, extremely smooth and velvety, with vibrant red fruit aromas.
On the palate, it delivers fruity notes and elegant tannin with hints of chocolate and spice.
Zenato. The soul of Lugana and the Heart of Valpolicella.
Two faces: One white, the other red, both emblems of high-quality wines that are born through a visceral passion for the land, through respect for time, through a family tradition that has championed local grape varieties for 60 years.
Zenato: the story of a family that firmly planted its roots in the land. It was made possible thanks to the passion and entrepreneurial vision of the estate’s founder, Sergio, who managed to fulfill his greatest dream: to create a winery capable of harvesting the fruits of the earth and transform them into emotions with matchless flavor.
Today, more than 60 years later, the results are testament to his extraordinary vision. A wonderful story took shape thanks to his vision and today its star is his family: Wife Carla and children Alberto and Nadia.
Their eyes and their heart continue down the path that Sergio laid out with great clarity as he steadied the course toward quality and love for their land. Over time, that land wasn’t just Lugana but also Valpolicella, with its celebrated red wines and their matchless aromas.
Taking over the Costalunga estate, in the heart of Valpolicella Classica, Sergio Zenato wanted to measure himself in a new venture, after making the most out of his Lugana vineyards: to make it a model vineyard, beautiful to look at, cared for in every detail, in which to apply modern agronomic techniques and at the same time resume the traditional methods that had defined the Valpolicella landscape.
In a thorough manner, Sergio Zenato drew the distribution on the land of the vines selected for the production of the different wines, going so far as to indicate the direction of the rows so that the vines could receive maximum benefits from the sun. He took special care to make the soil work well to achieve a dry and permeable soil without water retention.
A passionate dedication that we read in the construction of the characteristic dry-stone walls, at first sight elegant support structures, in actual fact an efficient containment system that guarantees the vine the three fundamental elements it needs: the warmth of the sun and the ventilation of air and water thanks to the gaps existing between the stones of the walls and the flaky crumbles of the subsurface.
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