Quintarelli Giuseppe Amarone della Valpolicella Classico 2000

When Giuseppe 'Bepi' Quintarelli declined to produce Amarone in difficult years — releasing the declassified Rosso del Bepi instead — he signalled that the 2000 vintage cleared his threshold: a discipline almost unparalleled in Valpolicella Classico. The estate's 12 hectares on Monte Cà Paletta in Cerè di Negrar sit at approximately 500 metres elevation on the eastern slope of the Negrar Valley, where limestone and volcanic basalt soils drain freely and altitude keeps valley fog at bay, concentrating phenolic ripeness without sacrificing structure.

The Corvina and Corvinone-led blend — augmented by Rondinella, Cabernet Sauvignon, Nebbiolo, Croatina, and Sangiovese — undergoes four to five-plus months of appassimento on straw mats and wooden racks, far exceeding regional norms, before low-temperature fermentation. The wine then rests in large-format neutral Slavonian oak botti for approximately 7–8 years, building complexity without imposing oak character; no new barrique is used.

What no peer does: the deliberate inclusion of Nebbiolo and Sangiovese in an Amarone blend, adding a structural backbone and aromatic lift that pure Corvina-based wines cannot replicate. At 24-plus years from harvest, the 2000 is in its full drinking arc — dried cherry, tobacco, and iron-rich earth fully integrated, tannins resolved, with a cellaring horizon extending well beyond 2035.