1997 Alegrini Amarone

[stevebody]

I met Marilisa at a recent Winebow tasting here in Seattle at the Edgewater Hotel and had an opportunity to talk with her at some length. She's as flambouyant as you might expect, both in dress and manner, but a down to earth sort of person whom I would be very surprised to find actually making a numbskull remark like the one attributed to her. She's perfectly well aware of Allegrini's place in the wine universe and part of our conversation dealt with exactly that difference between the Italians and French. (She wasn't at all shy about knocking some deserving French haut-houses around, either)

BTW, what is all this weary crap about wines being "typical"? Jeez, I thought we were past all that lunacy, here in 2K-Ought3. And who sets these arbitrary standards about what constitutes a typical Amarone, anyway? Certain well-travelled descriptors can, naturally, be used to describe the mass of past Amarones, just like some can be used to describe Paulliacs and Margaux. But they serve mostly to give wine pedants a handle to whack wines they don't personally like. The Italians in particular have struggled mightily for the past 30 year or so to break the stifling grip their own government has held on adventurous winemaking and people like the Allegrinis, Roberto Guldener, Ricardo Cotarella, AND Angelo Gaja have finally managed to make the wines they want to make by the simple expedient of telling the Itailan wine commissioners to go f__k themselves. Allegrini makes a great Amarone. Period. It's called evolution, folks. We're still primates, even if we're no longer "typical" monkies.