2009 Guerriere Rizzardi Amarone della Valpolicella Classico Calcarole 750 ml

In Fair Verona, Seduction Meets Power in Italy’s Most Spellbinding Red

If you travel to Italy this summer, make sure to go to Verona, if only to reserve a table outside the Roman amphitheater from which arias waft over the city on balmy weekend evenings. Those tables are in highest demand. But even they don’t hold a candle to what you’ll find 23 miles away in the hills of Bardolino if you do as we do and reserve a spot at the 18th century walled garden where famed winery Guerrieri Rizzardi conducts its tastings.

The spread — set amidst lemon trees and mythological statues — will likely include hunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, slices of paper-thin prosciutto di Parma, and thick-crust homemade bread drenched in olive oil made fresh from Rizzardi’s olive groves.

It’s all unthinkably delicious, but neither we, nor the pilgrimage of high-flying collectors who make the trek to Guerrieri Rizzardi each year, have come just for the antipasto. No, we come for the Amarone, the hauntingly beautiful, impossibly concentrated, noble red whose complexity and intensity frequently renders us speechless.

Those spots in the garden are getting harder to come by, because Guerrieri Rizzardi’s 2009 “Calcarole” Amarone was the GREATEST Italian red of the year, full-stop, according to Gambero Rosso’s 2014 guide. That august publication, home to Italy’s foremost wine critics, also pinned on its highest rating, Tre Bicchieri, making this bottle an absolute must-buy for any serious Italian wine collector.

The Amarone is only produced in the best vintages, and 2009 was extraordinary. Grapes were harvested from mature vines by hand from the south-west facing Calcarole vineyard, whose sandy, calcareous soil and warm climate are ideal suited to the Corvina grape. Picked at peak ripeness, select grapes were then dried in boxes. From December 9-11th the grapes fermented, losing about half their weight in the process. The wine then saw three years in oak before bottling in 2013.

Save for a special occasion — or an indulgent dinner — and decant for several hours. Then buckle up. Worth the price of admission for the aromatics alone, the nose is of brandied cherry, tobacco, black licorice, mocha, and freshly tilled soil. Then it gets better. The attack is beautifully concentrated and supple, spooling out deep black fruit, blueberry liqueur, graphite, and hints of rose and violet. A riptide of acidity and soft tannin gives way to a powerful finish balanced by almost Burgundian earthiness.

Only 50 cases of this dark, sumptuous Venetian beauty made it stateside. We eked out 20. For a short while, Gambero Rosso’s red wine of the year is going out to WineAccess customers 33% off the release price of $135. Just $89.99 — a deal that only gets better the longer this bottle gathers brooding power in your cellar. Don’t miss out.