30
Jan
2012
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Category: On the Road with the Grape Guy
Day 3. And it's up at the crack of dawn to jump on some buses and tour the wineries of the area. We have three days of this upcoming. We thankfully have broken down into smaller groups of about 7 or 8 so we don't descend en-mass at a winery - many of which, we have found out, can accommodate these small numbers but not many more. This makes it easy for us to taste wine and have more one on 8 conversations with the winery principals, than a gaggle of reporters shouting questions (yes, any more than 10 is considered a "gaggle". The big question about today was the church visits ... on the schedule were 5 churches and only 4 wineries - made us think the trip was being partially funded by the Catholic Church, so I guess a thank you to the Pope is in order. Interesting to note that all of the churches we visited throughout the day were closed ...a closed church? On a Sunday? It was hard for many of us to believe. Below I will continue my photographic journey through Italy with comments about the pictures and in some cases, between pictures (27,000 words were saved by showing you these). To see the pictures and the stories from Day 3, click here
To read about more interesting adventures thru the world of wine check out the On the Road With the Grape Guy blog.
29
Jan
2012
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Category: On the Road with the Grape Guy
This is the day we all came for, the tasting of the Amarones coming for the 2008 vintage. The press conference before hand gave everybody the background of the vintage, the economy we find ourselves in and whether or not Amorone, Valpolicella and Ripasso will continue its steady growth (though we learn that Valpolicella itself is on the decline both sales wise and production wise) ... plus an oenologist gave us an interesting presentation about the various regions of Valpolicella and how the wines differ from region to region. After the conference the media had a choice of two room in which to taste the 65 wines ... the blind tasting room, or the non-blind. I chose the blind room so as not to be influence by label or producer, because yes even a writer can be seduce by packaging.
My top five Amorone were as follows, all from the 2008 vintage ... most have already been bottled but there were also barrel samples in the mix, I will indicate as such:
Recchia (bottle)
Giuseppe Campagnola (bottle)
Ca Vegri (bottle)
Santi (barrel)
Roccolo Grassi (bottle)
After the tasting a little R & R time ... then dinner at Ristorante Rubiani, which was only a hop, skip and jump from the hotel Accademia where we are all staying..
Now I can sit and describe things to you but it might be easier to give you a little bit of a slide show ... because as someone once said, "a picture is worth a thousand words", if that is the case I give you 20,000 words of text in these pictures: (to see all 20 pictures click here)
To read about more interesting adventures thru the world of wine check out the On the Road With the Grape Guy blog.
