- Lifestyle
Quintarelli: The Legend of Amarone's Greatest Producer
A reclusive perfectionist in the hills above Verona who made Amarone the old way, released it years late, and became the most revered name in the Veneto by refusing to hurry.
- Words By House of Decant
Giuseppe Quintarelli is the most revered name in Valpolicella, and Amarone's greatest producer. From a modest estate at Negrar, north of Verona, he made wine the old, slow way and became a legend almost by accident. This is a full guide to Quintarelli and the wines we stock at House of Decant.
Quintarelli became the most revered name in the whole region without ever appearing to court the attention. He died in 2012, and his family has continued precisely as he did, changing essentially nothing, which in the restless world of modern Italian wine is close to a miracle. The wines are less products than acts of devotion, and they taste like it.
The Slow Art of Appassimento
Amarone begins by drying the grapes rather than pressing them fresh. After harvest they are laid out carefully on racks and left for months, slowly shrivelling and concentrating until they are almost raisins, before being pressed into a wine of extraordinary richness and power. Quintarelli did this with an almost monastic patience, then aged the results in large old oak for years, releasing bottles long after other producers would have sold out and moved on.
He treated time itself as an ingredient, as essential as the grapes, and he was never, ever, in a hurry to be finished.
The Wines We Stock
The Amarone della Valpolicella is the definitive statement, a wine of astonishing depth to be opened slowly and savoured over a long evening. Alongside it we stock Alzero, his most daring and improbable wine, made not from the traditional local grapes but from Cabernet and yet dried by the same painstaking appassimento method. On paper it should not work at all; in the glass it is magnificent, the sound of a lifelong traditionalist quietly breaking his own sacred rules to prove that he could.
Why the Bottles Cost What They Do
There is no getting around it: Quintarelli is expensive and hard to find, and the reasons are built into the wine. The drying sacrifices a huge proportion of the potential volume; the years of ageing tie up each vintage for a decade or more; and the estate refuses to grow or cut corners. Scarcity here is not a marketing tactic but the honest consequence of doing everything the slow, old way.
How to Drink It
Decant the Amarone well ahead, serve it in a large glass a touch below room temperature, and give it a long evening and a plate of something rich and slow-cooked, braised beef, aged cheese, or simply good company and time. Do not save it only for a special occasion; opening it is the special occasion.
For the wider picture of the country these wines come from, see our Italian wine regions guide, or explore more of the country's greats in our guide to the best Italian red wine.
What It Tastes Like
The Amarone is a wine of extraordinary depth and stillness: dried cherry, fig, cocoa, tobacco and sweet spice, powerful yet strangely weightless, with a finish that seems to go on for a full minute. Alzero, the Cabernet made by the Amarone method, is denser and darker, all black fruit, chocolate and a velvety, sweet-edged richness that should not work and completely does. These are not wines you drink so much as sit with, slowly, as they unfold.
Everything about them speaks of time: the months of drying, the years in old oak, the decade or more before release. They taste patient, if a wine can, and they reward the same patience in the drinking. Open one too fast and you miss the point; give it air and an evening and it becomes one of the great experiences in Italian wine.
The Whole Estate, Not Just the Amarone
Beyond the flagship Amarone and the heretical Alzero, the estate makes a full range in the same uncompromising spirit, from the everyday but far-from-simple Primofiore to the crisp, characterful Bianco Secco and the sweet, historic Recioto. All of it carries the same signature: nothing rushed, nothing added, nothing released before its time. To drink any Quintarelli wine is to taste a philosophy as much as a place.
These are not wines you simply drink. They are wines you sit with, slowly, as an entire philosophy unfolds in the glass.
Quintarelli bottles are scarce, expensive and entirely worth the pilgrimage. They are what happens when a single family decides, without compromise, that doing things properly matters far more than doing them quickly, and then holds that difficult line for the better part of a century.
