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If Dal Forno’s Valpolicella is essentially an Amarone, then what does that make his Amarone? Good question. It’s unlikely that Dal Forno himself would be able to tell you. See, Dal Forno has never really made Amarone by the books or by anything, for that matter, that inherently limits what the wine might be. Quintarelli showed him what the wine could be, but Dal Forno showed Quintarelli and the world something else altogether, reinterpreting Amarone within a bold, unapologetically modern context to produce a hedonistic, heady, provocative style. It's a wine derived from its very antithesis—a fanatical, unrelenting, and nearly ascetic-minded effort that has created Amarone’s ultimate expression.Dal Forno’s reinvention was radical from the start. In 1990, he dispensed with Slavonian oak, the traditional vessel for aging Amarone, and brought in French oak barrique. He then experimented with the passito method (aka, appassimento, drying of the grapes) and different aging regimens, releasing the wines only after five years’ maturation in various combinations of barrique and bottle aging. He was also one of the first to reject the somewhat bland Molinara grape—one of Amarone’s traditional constituents—finding an attractive replacement in Oseleta, which enhanced the wine’s cosmetic (intensifying color) and structural (heightening acidity) expressions.Because he understood that the success of the drying process was critical to the quality of the wine, Dal Forno brought in an air circulation system to ensure the grapes’ well being over a 90-day drying period. Thus, when a troublesome vintage such as ’02 occurs, there’s not much for a vintner like Dal Forno to worry about. You see, with a wine like Amarone, half the battle is won in that drying room, where producers must endeavor to maintain stability. As Dal Forno’s discriminating selection process admits only the highest quality grapes into that room, ’02 emerged in quintessential Dal Forno form, which is to say, answering to Dal Forno first and acknowledging the vintage only to its advantage and ours—in gloriously early accessibility.
It's a wine derived from its very antithesis—a fanatical, unrelenting, and nearly ascetic-minded effort that has created Amarone’s ultimate expression. Dal Forno’s reinvention was radical from the start. In 1990, he dispensed with Slavonian oak, the traditional vessel for aging Amarone, and brought in French oak barrique. He then experimented with the passito method (aka, appassimento, drying of the grapes) and different aging regimens, releasing the wines only after five years’ maturation in various combinations of barrique and bottle aging. He was also one of the first to reject the somewhat bland Molinara grape—one of Amarone’s traditional constituents—finding an attractive replacement in Oseleta, which enhanced the wine’s cosmetic (intensifying color) and structural (heightening acidity) expressions.
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