Most Valpolicellas are drunk relatively young - within three years - and traditionally served around 56 - 60 degrees F. Lesser versions are fine with poultry and pork, but the better wines will stand up to lamb and beef. Our featured wine comes from 30-year old vines in the heart of the classico district. The bouquet shows cherry and blackberry fruit. Light on its feet, it has great balance and an intriguing interplay of ripe tannin, acidity, and the “sweetness” of ripe fruit. Try it with Boccone’s Steak Valpolicella.

The Fumanelli Family has cultivated their land since 1470. Cellars were dug beneath the Villa late in the 15th century, but wine production didn’t begin until 1600. The quality of the vineyards flagged during and after World War I, and winemaking ceased in 1927, though the estate continued to grow and sell grapes. The property was resuscitated in the 1970s and 1980s, and production resumed with the 1999 vintage. The Fumanellis still sell grapes to Bolla and Bertani, but they save the best for their own wines. These will continue to improve as recent plantings of superior clones on a new trelllising system called Guiot 5/6000 begin to come “on line.”

Viticulture in Veneto predates the Romans who applied the term Rhetic to the wine coming from the area south of Lake Garda. The wine, praised by Pliny the Elder, Virgil, Martial, and Suetonius, was clearly from the region now known as Valpolicella. The name refers to the wine and to a town in this region and dates to the late 12th century when administrative officials in Verona took control of a valley along the river Adige as far as Pol (Santa Lucia di Pescantina) for tax and justice purposes. Thus it was first called valle di Pol.