The first properly cold evening always arrives without warning. One week you are still finishing something pale and chilled on the last of the light. The next you are pulling the curtains at six and wanting a wine with a jumper on. In the hills above Verona they have spent centuries answering exactly that craving, and they do it with one valley, one grape, and one very clever trick.

The valley is Valpolicella, and the grape doing most of the talking is Corvina. The trick is drying. Lay the bunches out on racks through the autumn and something quietly transformative happens: the water leaves, the sugar and flavour concentrate, and a bright, gentle red turns into something that can fill a room. From that single idea comes a whole family of wines, four rungs on one ladder, running from the bottle you open on a Tuesday to the one you save for the first proper roast of the season. Learn the ladder and you have autumn and winter sorted. Here is how to climb it.

Valpolicella: The Bottom Rung, and No Bad Thing

Start at the floor, because the floor here is a lovely place to be. Straight Valpolicella is Corvina in its everyday clothes: bright sour cherry, a twist of bitter almond, a texture closer to silk than velvet. It takes a faint chill happily, which makes it the Italian answer to the awkward weeks when it is not quite cold enough for the heavy artillery. Bertani's Secco-Bertani Vintage Edition is the grown-up expression of this idea, a dry, savoury Valpolicella with a peppery edge and real backbone. Secco simply means dry, and it is the bottle that proves the base wine never needed rescuing in the first place.

Ripasso: The Baby Amarone

Then comes the cleverest wine in the region, and arguably the best value in Italian red full stop. Ripasso takes a finished Valpolicella and re-passes it, which is exactly what the word means, over the warm skins and pips left behind once the big wines have been made. The young wine effectively wakes up on that pomace, taking on a little more colour, alcohol and depth, and lands somewhere between its humble parent and its grand sibling. People call it baby Amarone, which slightly undersells it. This is the wine for a midweek ragù, a mushroom risotto, or any Wednesday that has quietly earned a treat: sweet dark cherry, a dusting of cocoa, and a warmth that tastes like considerably more money than it costs.

Amarone: The Top of the Valley

Amarone is what happens when you take the drying trick to its logical extreme. The finest bunches are picked early and rested for three or four months until they are half raisin, then pressed and fermented all the way to dry. The name translates, roughly, as the great bitter, a nod to the savoury twist that keeps all that concentrated fruit from collapsing into syrup. The result is enormous and oddly graceful at once: dried figs, black cherry steeped in kirsch, chocolate, a curl of woodsmoke, and fifteen or sixteen per cent alcohol worn like a well-cut coat. This is a fireside wine, made for the first braise of the year and the last conversation of the night. Bertani's long-aged Amarone della Valpolicella Classico is the benchmark, released only after the better part of a decade resting in the cellar, though you certainly do not need to spend that much to understand the style.

Recioto: The Sweet Ancestor

Here is the twist most people miss: the sweet one came first. Recioto is the original wine of Valpolicella, made in the same way as Amarone but with the fermentation stopped early, leaving the dried-grape sweetness in the glass. The story goes that Amarone itself was a happy accident, a barrel of Recioto forgotten in a cellar that fermented all the way to dry. True or not, it makes for a lovely thing to say over the bottle. Recioto della Valpolicella is the one to pour with a wedge of hard, salty cheese or a dark chocolate pudding: rich and velvety, and nowhere near as heavy as you might fear.

Which Rung Tonight?

So how do you actually use the ladder? Match the rung to the evening. A straight Valpolicella or the Secco is your all-rounder, at ease with pizza, a board of charcuterie, or a Tuesday that asks for no occasion at all. Ripasso is the autumn sweet spot, built for the slow ragùs and risottos that start appearing as the clocks edge towards changing. Amarone is for the weekend: game, a proper braise, aged cheese, and a fire if you are lucky enough to have one. Recioto closes the meal. And if you want to see how far the drying trick can travel, two cult bottles push at the very edges. Allegrini's La Poja is pure Corvina from a single hilltop, the grape proving it can stand entirely alone, while Giuseppe Quintarelli's Alzero applies the appassimento method to Cabernet: a beautiful heresy from the most revered name the valley has ever produced.

None of this asks for a special occasion. It asks only for a change in the weather, and that has already arrived. The quiet genius of the Veneto is that it has anticipated every mood between a light Tuesday and a long Sunday, and priced them accordingly. So the next time a cold evening turns up without warning, you will know precisely which rung to reach for. Pull the curtains. Pour something with a jumper on.