Happy Independence Day eve! Yes, summer is in full swing and the fireworks are blazing, but it's also the first Saturday in July, which means this is Cellar Saturday! I will open a bottle of something at least a decade in the making and share it with you. Tonight I've dug out a nice Italian wine (I'm convinced that the big wines of Italy are best when they are allowed to mature for at least a decade), one that I'm not sure where I bought it, the 2007 Giuseppe Campagnola Amarone della Valpolicella. Amarone is a special wine from the north of Italy, where the grapes are allowed to dry before pressing, revealing a fabulous concentration of flavor. So let's see how this one is tasting!
The wine is a deep, inky purple in the glass with lovely garnet along the edges, making this look more like a Cabernet than a Valpolicella. After letting this one breathe for an hour or so, a quick swirl in the glass reveals rustic aromas of leather, anise, green grass and mulberry. Take a sip and you get unexpected flavors of strawberry, ripe cherry and plum that transition easily to some earthy notes of peat and dusty limestone midpalate. The tannins are nicely structured to provide a great base for the long dry finish, with a quick burst of acidity at the end.
Overall, I would rate this wine a solid 9, as it has certainly come into its own over the past 14 years. This wine would be ideal with lamb, wild mushroom risotto, or a hearty steak. Tonight I am enjoying this wine with a prime tomahawk ribeye grilled Pittsburgh rare, topped with some of the last of the season's garlic scapes and some grilled asparagus. Cheers!
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