The 2019 harvest is ready to start in Valpolicella and new rules of production are setted to be used.

Recently, the members’ assembly of Consorzio Valpolicella (the wine board of Valpolicella producers) approved a modification in the production rules of the appellation,  and according to the Consorzio president Andrea Sartori, “this is just the beginning”. Is new dawn approaching this important wine region? We’ll see. 
The newly approved rules are the following…

Afterwards a quite difficult vintage, this 2015 harvest in Valpolicella looks a lot better, mainly for the red grapes. If 2014 has been claimed by the producers (in Verona area) as “a vintage for white wines”,  2015 is a “red wines vintage” definitely. 
“The 2015 vintage is quite similar to 2007 -  the Consortium Valpolicella says - The wines will be structured, full-bodied and alcoholic (15-16° Vol.)”...

Making wine is often a hard task, a game of balance between opposite strengths: technical issues, legal requirements, personal knowledge and vision, local culture, international taste, marketing trends...

And climate. Too often we underestimate this detail, but  in viticulture it is among the most important element everywhere in the world. No doubts that climate in Valpolicella nowadays is rather different than in the past, and that viticulture has had to adapt itself to those changes.

Consequently, now the wines are different than in the past decades -not to mention other reasons more related to the technique or the customers' taste, of course- although the winery style may be the same at the time (or trying to be).

In the last Vinitaly, the Cantina "Valpolicella"  di Negrar organized a quite interesting vertical tasting of its recent best vintages - 2008, 2005, 2003, 2000, 1997 - of the most important Amarone della Valpolicella: the cru "Vigneti di Jago". Daniele Accordini, the general manager and winemaker, showed us some charts and data about the climate in those vintages - sunlightining, rains, flowering time and other data - explaining how the practices of their viticulture and the winemaking process are adapting themselves and trying to correctly interpret  the natural trends, in order to not distort the final result and support their usual style...

In a dramatic development following some recent anticipations about a very difficult harvest in Valpolicella (see our report), we learnt that Consorzio Tutela Valpolicella (the organization representing local wine bottlers, cooperatives, wine producers and winegrowers), decided to lower from 50% to 35% the amount of grapes to be reserved for the drying process for the production of Amarone  2014.

Due to a month and a half of heavy rain, hail storms and excessive soil humidity, the health of grapes seems to be undermined almost everywhere in Valpolicella, with the exception of some hills exposed to local fresh winds (for more details, please read our report here)...