Amarone della Valpolicella Classico DOCG “Etichetta Rossa” 2017 – Villa Spinosa

The Corvina Veronese, Corvinone and Rondinella grapes of the Amarone della Valpolicella Classico Etichetta Rossa Villa Spinosa are grown in the Figari and Jago vineyards at an altitude of 240-300 meters with west exposure (Figari), east (Iago) on land originating from marine deposits, calcareous, shallow and of average fertility. The harvest goes from the middle of September to the beginning of October, the harvest is manual with the selection of the bunches and deposited in small crates for withering. Soft crushing and destemming of the grapes follow, fermentation temperature 8-15 ° C; maceration lasts from 4 to 6 weeks with daily pumping and delestages every 2-3 days; in spring malolactic fermentation is expected. The Amarone della Valpolicella Classico DOCG “Etichetta Rossa” Villa Spinosa ages in steel tanks for 1 month; 12 months in barriques, 1-2 years in Slovenian oak barrels; then refines 12 months in the bottle.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the engineer Giacomo Guglielmi began the construction of the rustic farms of Jago, placing them alongside the most ancient original nucleus, most likely dating back to the early eighteenth century. This was followed by the construction of the Villa and the Italian garden, which still surrounds it today: the cottages, located behind the Villa, are a traditional expression of rural Valpolicella construction, made using the local tuff stone. In the XVIII century, the lands were managed in Valpolicella with the sharecropping contract: the wine grape was not the predominant production, but one of the many products of the farms which, at that time in the area, also produced fruit and arable land and raised cattle. In the second half of the twentieth century, the direct management of farms replaced the management in a sharecropping form and the wine became increasingly important until it became the dominant and symbolic product of Valpolicella. After the great wine crisis, in the eighties of the last century, Valpolicella and its wines, above all Amarone, became protagonists on the world scene of quality wine. At that time many small and medium-sized farms, until then producing wine grapes to be marketed, they turned into wineries producing wines of great prestige. Villa Spinosa is one of the companies born, in those years, thanks to an important work of restructuring the cottages and vineyards. The recovery of rural environments, once destined to agricultural activities (stables, warehouses, chicken coops, shelters for tools and livestock), has transformed the historic buildings into rational locations for the various activities of the wine production cycle, from the withering of the grapes to the refinement of bottled wines. The renovation of the dwellings, once destined for rural families, allowed for the arrangement of the rooms, in which today the agritourism activities are carried out. The intervention of land settlement of the land has also allowed the planting of new and rational vineyards. This long and intense journey of evolution and transformation has made Villa Spinosa a modern and rational wine and agritourism company of the Valpolicella Classica.