Italians Rule!
Valpolicella Wine Tasting at New Year
Last time I posted a small comment on my blog about wine, my web site statistics went stratospheric. So, purely in the interests of statistics, I have once again pointed my taste buds in the direction of some interesting Italians!
I was fortunate enough to spend New Year with friends who have a wonderful Italian wine cellar. One of the benefits of having a dozen or so from each vintage is that you can open wines at various stages of their development and decide whether they could do with more time or should be finished off or relegated to the in-house wine rack for quaffing.
We started the evening with Zenato Valpolicella Superior 2007 which was a great palate cleanser. Valpolicella is from the Veneto region of Italy and is second only to the Chianti region in terms of volume. This wine set the scene nicely for the following beauties.
Second-up was a 2003 Ripassa Valpolicella from Monte Faustino, very fruity and smooth wine. It was a drier style than the Zenato and had a lot more tannin. This was a fine example of the Ripasso style of wine.
Lastly, we had another 2006 Ripassa Zenato Valpolicella wine with a lot of structure which needed a few more years to be at it best. John the owner of the cellar had tasted the 2005 version of this wine previously and in his opinion the 2006 was definitely a better wine. It would be worthwhile tracking this one down and putting a dozen the cellar.
The overall verdict for the evening was that the 2003 Ripassa Valpolicella from Monte Faustino was the best wine of the evening. A half hour after removing the cork the wine had opened up nicely and we accompanied this with a gourmet homemade pizza – a match made in heaven if I dare the cliché.
Molto bene
In response to some of the questions I have had about this post, I have made a note here on the Ripasso style of wine.
Stylistically the Zenato Ripassa comes between a Valpolicella and an Amarone and it is sometimes known as a baby Amarone. As soon as the fermentation is complete, selected lots of Valpolicella is then “re-passed” on to the Amarone pomace (the solids left after the juice is extracted) which enhances the wine.
Having been lucky enough to sample the 2003 Ripassa Valpolicella for myself I have to agree that it was superb. It was a fine combination with my vegetarian pizza featuring lots of olives imported sun-dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts from Italia. Molto bene indeed.
Online marketing is not just for the effective product, producing a website or for letting customers buy items online. Online marketing can likewise include how a business owner can employ a work team. The measure of people who are studying computers, web design, and learning to host websites proves just how successful online marketing can make the employer, the employees, and the independent contractors. And with a sufficient Internet savvy team, your business earnings can increase too.
Online marketing is not just for the latest product, creating a website or for allowing customers purchase items ongoing. Online marketing can likewise include how a business owner can employ a work team. The number of people who are taking computers, web design, and learning to host websites proves just how booming online marketing can make the employer, the employees, and the independent contractors. And with a sufficient Internet savvy team, your business earnings can increase too.
Good Article. I hope you don’t mind me posting here. I love your site, I’ll be back for your next article
Hello. This is kind of an “unconventional” question , but have other visitors asked you how get the menu bar to look like you’ve got it? I also have a blog and am really looking to alter around the theme, however am scared to death to mess with it for fear of the search engines punishing me. I am very new to all of this …so i am just not positive exactly how to try to to it all yet. I’ll just keep working on it one day at a time Thanks for any help you can offer here.Check out my website if you get a chance, just click on name. (I don’t want to leave a link, it looks too spammy)
Hello, it looks like your site is up and coming in the world
Its all done with a wordpress theme which makes it easy. You would have to move you blog to wordpress unless the blog you are using has another template you can switch to.
Hi. Very interesting site. I found it on Bing. I will definately recommend it to my friends. Please keep up the great work.
I would like to thank you for the efforts you have made in writing this article. I am hoping the same best work from you in the future as well. In fact your creative writing abilities has inspired me to start my own blog now.
thanks for posting this
Thats a great article, thanks for posting it. I’ve bookmarked your website and will look forward to reading more!