The Valpolicella Wine Region Discovery Guide

Valpolicella is where Amarone comes from, and understanding that wine means seeing the fruttaio -- the drying loft where the grapes spend the winter on racks before they are pressed. No amount of tasting elsewhere substitutes for it.

But the region is more than its cellars. Villa della Torre at Fumane is one of the strangest Mannerist buildings in the Veneto, with fireplaces carved as monsters' mouths. The Pieve di San Giorgio above Sant'Ambrogio is a Romanesque church with a cloister and a Lombard ciborium of 712, standing on a terrace with the whole valley below it.

The Serego Alighieri estate at Gargagnago has been in the hands of Dante's descendants since his son Pietro bought it in 1353 -- an unbroken line of ownership almost seven centuries long.

And it is fifteen minutes from Verona, which makes it the easiest serious wine country in Italy to reach.

If you travel slowly: base yourself in one of the valleys for three or four days. The distances are tiny but the roads are slow, and two cellar visits in a day is a realistic maximum.

If you want the essentials: one estate with a fruttaio you can walk into, and the Pieve di San Giorgio. A long day from Verona.

If you're after local character: the smaller family producers in Marano and Negrar, where the visit is someone's father showing you the drying loft rather than a tasting-room script.

If you want to go past the obvious: go up. Above the vineyards, Lessinia has the Ponte di Veja natural arch and the Grotta di Fumane, a Palaeolithic site occupied by both Neanderthals and early modern humans -- a completely different region sitting directly on top of the wine one.

Valpolicella's central tension is visible from any hillside: the demand for Amarone has pushed vineyards up slopes and across valley floors that used to hold cherry orchards, olives and woodland, and the monoculture is now nearly total in the Classico valleys.

Producers working with cover crops, retaining hedgerows and old terraces, or farming organically are the ones holding some of that diversity in place, and they are worth seeking out and buying from.

Marble quarrying at Sant'Ambrogio is the region's other industry and its other landscape impact -- the hillsides there are cut into, permanently and visibly.

Practically: book cellar visits rather than arriving unannounced, since most of these are working farms; use a driver, because the roads are narrow and the tastings are strong; and come mid-week, when the Classico valleys are working rather than receiving.

September and October are the region at work: harvest, then the grapes going onto the racks. The most interesting time to visit a cellar, and the busiest.

May and June are the loveliest -- green, warm, with the cherry country in the upper valleys in flower earlier in April.

January and February have a particular appeal: the fruttai are full, the drying is nearly done, and the pressing of Amarone happens. Cold and bare outside, but this is the moment the wine is actually made.

July and August are hot and quiet -- many small producers close in August.

What a visitor actually spends in Valpolicella