2013 Speri Vigneto Monte Sant Urbano Amarone della Valpolicella Classico 750 ml

Speri Only Produces Amarone in Top Vintages

No Old World wine boasts more body, more boldness, and more depth than Amarone, and the 2013 Speri Vigneto Monte Sant Urbano Amarone della Valpolicella Classico delivers all that in spades. Produced by the seventh-generation Speri clan from their 150 acres in the hills of the Valpolicella Classico zone, their 2013 Amarone garnered 93 points from James Suckling, as well as Tre Bicchieri from the Gambero Rosso magazine: the highest honor an Italian wine can receive in its home country. Speri only produces Amarone in top vintages, and none in history has rated higher than the 94-point 2013 season, according to Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. Whether enjoyed now paired as a powerful accompaniment to rich red meats, or cellared, this is a spectacular bottling of one of Europe’s most stately wines—at the best price in the U.S. Shipping included on 2.

Is it possible that we have a Hollywood screenwriter to thank for keeping Amarone, one of Europe’s most regal wines, under the radar? Consider the facts: Ted Tally’s script for 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs, in which Dr. Hannibal Lecter made a star out of an unwitting wine by waxing poetic about eating a dish with “fava beans and a nice Chianti.” But the 1988 Thomas Harris book on which the film is based reads a little bit differently. In it, the gourmand Dr. Lecter wistfully recalls the same dish, paired with “a big Amarone.”

Until we can crack a bottle with Mr. Tally, we’ll never know why he made the change in his Oscar-winning script. But if that tiny tweak helped keep Amarone for the connoisseurs and its prices reasonable, we can live with the mystery.

If any wine’s price tag is justified, it’s Amarone’s. Subjecting the grapes to the appassimiento process—allowing them to raisinate on straw mats—is akin to dry-aging a beautiful ribeye: It results in incomparable flavors, but at a steep cost of about 40 percent of the finished product.

At Speri Vigneto, that painstaking detail extends to the vineyards, which are now certified organic. All of their fruit is estate-grown, much of it on dry stone marogne that form terraces up the steepest parts of the vineyards. The fruit is hand-harvested from late September to mid-October is then dried in the fruttai (ventilated drying room) for 100 days before being crushed in January. After a month-long maceration, the Amarone is aged in oak casks for three years.

According to Parker’s Wine Advocate, the 2013 vintage in Valpolicella was as good as any in history, providing impeccable raw materials to start the long, involved process of making top-flight Amarone. Whether you earmark yours for a dry-aged ribeyes, or sock it away for a decade of development in the cellar, claiming the 2013 Speri is a wise move.