Vintage’s update Zenato:
Valpolicella Superiore 2022 and Ripassa 2021 are available.
Made from vineyards in Valpolicella, this wine has an impressive lingering finish with rich flavor.
The blend is 85% Corvina Veronese, 10% Rondinella, and 5% Corvinone.
On the nose, it delivers delicate hints of almond and violet.
On the palate, it’s dry and smooth with good structure and wonderfully robust notes of cherry and prune.
As soon as the dried grapes for the winery’s Amarone have completed fermentation, a top selection of Valpolicella grapes “passes over” (ripassa) the Amarone pomace, thus resulting in a second brief fermentation.
This helps to obtain higher alcohol content, deeper color, and rich flavor and aroma. Af-ter aging in French tonneaux for 18-20 months, the wine is cellared for another 6 months in bottle before release.
The process makes for a refined and concentrated wine, extremely smooth and vel-vety, with vibrant red fruit aromas.
On the palate, it delivers fruity notes and elegant tannin with hints of chocolate and spice. Ripassa has played a highly important role in the Zenato winery’s evolution over the years.
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.
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.
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.
In the flash of an eye and the wonder of Lake Garda is all there: in the beauty of the landscape; in the naturalist, historic, and artistic value of the land; in the mild climate.
The secret of Trebbiano di Lugana, a native grape variety planted on the southern banks of Lake Garda, is hidden in its origins.
With the backdrop of this pristine setting, the gates of the Santa Cristina estate open up on to a broad road with elegant red rose bushes on either side. They are the silent sentinels to whom the Zenato family has entrusted their rows of vines.
All of the incredible things that have happened in this little corner of the world are thanks to the extraordinary intuition and entrepreneurial power of a grape grower who was in love with his land and absolutely convinced of the quality of the wines that only this land could produce. It all began with a white wine, Lugana: Sergio Zenato’s Challenge and Dream since the 1960s.
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