Valpolicella, Roccolo Grassi 2020
Mix any six bottles and you pay the Any 6+ price at checkout — no code needed.
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Why this wine
Half the fruit dried on racks and twenty months in oak give this the depth of a far more expensive Veneto red without tipping into Amarone weight. Marco Sartori cuts his yields hard and it shows in the concentration. A serious bottle at an everyday-drinking price.
At a glance
- Grape
- Corvina 60%, Corvinone 15%, Rondinella 15%, Croatina 5%, Oseleta 5%
- Region
- Veneto, Italy
- Alcohol
- 14.50%
- Body
- Medium
- Acidity
- Medium
- Tannins
- Medium
- Sweetness
- Dry
- Drink
- Short (3-5 yrs)
- Pairs with
- Red Meat, Pasta, Cheese
How it tastes
Peppery tobacco and spice on the nose, then rich red fruit over a round, balanced palate, with savoury notes carrying through to a long finish. Medium-bodied and warm rather than heavy, the tannins soft and the concentration coming from the half of the crop dried on racks before fermentation. Corvina 60%, Corvinone 15%, Rondinella 15%, Croatina 5%, Oseleta 5%.
The producer
Roccolo Grassi was established in 1996 by Bruno Sartori and his children Francesca and Marco, and Marco makes the wine. The fruit comes from the estate's fifteen hectares in Val di Mezzane, eight of them given to Valpolicella, on volcanic basaltic soil between 200 and 300 metres, Guyot-trained at 7,500 vines per hectare and pruned hard to hold yields down; woods, olive groves and fruit trees around the vines keep the ecosystem varied. The grapes were hand-picked in the first week of October, half fermented fresh and half after twenty days drying on racks, macerated for twenty to thirty days in stainless steel at 25 to 28°C with daily pumping over and punching down. Malolactic conversion happened in wood, and each parcel spent twenty months in Slavonian oak barrels or French barriques, 30% of them new, before blending and ten months in bottle.
Food and drinking
Serve at 16–18°C. Good with braised beef short ribs, sausage and lentils, mushroom risotto or a mature pecorino. Drinking well now and over the next five to ten years. Suitable for vegetarians and vegans.