The Valpolicella Wine Region Culture

Appassimento is the region's defining practice: corvina, corvinone and rondinella picked in September and laid on racks in ventilated lofts until January, losing a third or more of their weight. What is pressed then is either fermented dry, making Amarone, or stopped sweet, making Recioto -- the older of the two.

Ripasso is the region's thrifty invention: ordinary Valpolicella refermented on the pressed Amarone skins, gaining body from them.

Marble is the other trade. Sant'Ambrogio has quarried and carved stone since Roman times, and the region supplied the material for much of Verona.

The food is Veronese and built for these wines: bollito with pearà, risotto all'Amarone, braised beef, and Monte Veronese cheese from the mountain pastures above.

The upper valleys keep an older culture of cherries, chestnuts and the contrade -- the scattered stone hamlets of Lessinia, some founded by Bavarian settlers in the thirteenth century whose Cimbrian dialect survived into modern times.