Amarone is a delicious wine, rich, decadent, and high in alcohol, all of which is a result of the way the wine is produced. Made from Corvina, Corvinone, and Rondinella, the grapes are picked and then dried for months on straw racks in the open air. This allows the grapes to raisinate, thereby intensifying the flavors and concentrating the sugars. While this process makes a very wonderful wine, it also means it takes a lot of grapes to make one bottle, as the grapes lose a ton of their liquid as they dry.
Making Amarone is an expensive process, but one that is also beautiful and artisanal. It takes patience to make a great bottle of Amarone, and that patience and expense are noted in the price of the wine. It’s a wine that can truly connect its end cost to its cost of production. While other famous regions also have inflated prices due to regional reputation, which thereby makes the land more expensive or can tie their costs back to the reputation of the brand and its marketing, here the cost of the wine is very much a result of how expensive it is to create.
