Speri Amarone della Valpolicella Classico Vigneto Monte Sant'Urbano 2019

A compelling bouquet of dusty dried violets, fresh coffee grounds, cocoa powder and dried black cherries makes the 2019 Amarone della Valpolicella Classico Sant'Urbano impossible to ignore. This is wonderfully lifted and graceful in style, dense yet energetic with silken textures and polished red berry fruits that slowly saturate the palate. The 2019 youthfully folds in upon itself, leaving a bitter tinge of spice, dark chocolate and fine-grained tannins. The balance here is something to behold. The 2019 is full of potential—bury it deep.

A single Amarone here, from one vineyard. If there was the legislation to promote single vineyard wine, the estate would likely make more of them. But as it stands, there is not. A large-framed wine with a coil of tannins, operating like a spring of expansion, tension and promotion, sashaying notes of coffee grind, camphor, bitter chocolate, mocha, clove, olive, Fernet Branca, balsamic and pithy cherry notes long across the palate on one hand, while tightening the structural latticework to keep them contained, poised and eminently drinkable, on the other. The more I go back to this, the more I like it. A sophisticated Amarone, with a wonderful skein of acidity towing length. Drinkable now, but best from 2025.

Hints of crushed pine and marjoram lace wild cherry and mulberry fruit flavors, with a silky profile enmeshed with fine, taut tannins. Shows focus and length, with perfumed notes of cracked pink peppercorn, paprika, iron and dried violet joining the herb accents on the lasting finish. Corvina, Corvinone and Rondinella. Drink now through 2032.