Description
Ca’ La Bionda, Valpolicella Classico
I’ve said this before: Valpolicella wine has been a victim of its own success. The near-ubiquity of this classic red in Italian-American restaurants doomed it to be overlooked by “serious” wine drinkers, but if you’re still dismissing Valpolicella as “cheap and cheerful,” you’re not keeping up with the times.
Much like France’s Beaujolais, Valpolicella is much more than the handful of behemoth brands that shaped everyone’s opinions for a generation. Cru Beaujolais is now a prestige destination, of course—a hotbed of innovation, youthful enthusiasm, and organic farming—and once people come to appreciate Valpolicella the terroir, not the “brand,” wines like Ca’ La Bionda’s pitch-perfect 2020 will get the respect they deserve. The $23 price tag on this bottle is completely divorced from the superb, nuanced wine inside—it’s inconceivable that so much wine can be had for so little money. The Castellani family of Ca’ La Bionda has been farming organically since 2000, and this wine displays the kind of energy and purity that only comes from conscientiously farmed fruit. If it came from Beaujolais we’d be giving it a tickertape parade, but since it’s from Valpolicella it may need an extra push. I’m more than happy to do the pushing—you must not miss this!
NOTE: Stay tuned this afternoon for an offer of Ca’ La Bionda’s “Bianco del Casal,” one of the most transcendent, Burgundy-esque Italian whites we’ve tasted in a long time. This estate is for real!
Ca’ La Bionda is headquartered in the picturesque town of Marano, the epicenter of the Valpolicella Classico appellation area. Situated just north of Verona (one of the most beautiful small cities in Italy, by the way), the Valpolicella Classico is a band of north-south valleys that spill down towards Verona from the Monte Lessini, which are part of the eastern Alps (and form part of a natural border with the Trentino region). At the western edge of the Valpolicella Classico are the Adige River and Lake Garda, with vineyards spread over the hills of the Fumane, Marano, and Negrar Valleys, all of which run south to the Adige, which makes an abrupt turn east at Verona on its way to the Adriatic.
In the ’60s and ’70s, Valpolicella, along with its neighbor, Soave, was a commercial juggernaut. And, as in Soave, the boundaries of the original Valpolicella zone were expanded (into the neighboring plains) so that production could be increased to keep up with demand. Quantity over quality became the name of the game in Valpolicella, although it was also home to artisanal holdouts like the late Giuseppe Quintarelli, whose eclectic range of wines at least kept Valpolicella in the conversation among serious wine aficionados. During my formative wine years, the conversation around Valpolicella centered on the production of Amarone, the bulked-up version of Valpolicella made from dried grapes. The local Corvina grape, which is the driving force in Valpolicella wines, has thick, durable skins, so it takes well to air-drying (a process in which water evaporates and the grape sugars become more concentrated), so over the years, much of the non-Amarone Valpolicella we’re seeing has incorporated some dried-grape wine in the mix in some percentage.
Ca’ La Bionda’s 2020 is an unvarnished (and un-dried) look at Corvina (70%) and its supporting cast, Corvinone (20%) and Rondinella. Despite its thick skins, Corvina does not produce inky-colored wines (a trait it shares with Piedmont’s Nebbiolo). Instead, this is a bright garnet-red at its core moving to pink at the rim. Aromatically, it’s about as far from Amarone as one could get without switching to another set of grapes altogether, be it Pinot Noir, Gamay, or Sangiovese. There are hints of all three of those here, with aromas of red cherry, raspberry, blood orange, tomato leaf, rose petals, wild herbs, and dusty earth. The wine is unoaked, light-bodied, and amazingly refined, with just the slightest nip of fine-grained tannin lending a perfect amount of grip. It’s way more than a rustic, tangy table wine but what the heck, treat it as such if you like—pair it with pizza or pasta with your homemade marinara sauce and it will be right at home. As with most crisp Cru Beaujolais, I also find this wine infinitely more enjoyable at a cooler temperature, around 55-60 degrees, which tamps down the acidity and plays up that bright red fruit. It’s just spot-on—there’s no better way to say it. Enjoy!
