2002 De Feudis Amarone della Valpolicella Classico

[hotwine]

She sent the afternoon working on a killer pasta sauce for our small group meeting (from church) here tomorrow night, with lean ground beef & Italian sausage in the mix; then decided to wimp out on supper with a simple frozen pizza, but topped that sucker with the sauce. Zowie, what a sauce! Needed more than the usual suspect for pairing, which would be a Chianti Classico. Had picked this up at Costco a couple of weeks ago and saw the opportunity to give it a try. Boyoboy, what a nice wine! Very dark in the glass, wonderful nose of bruised red fruit; spicey red & black fruit on the palate, a bit tart but lingering nicely, lip-smacking finish. Will definitely buy more. And she loved it too. 14.5% alc/vol, $18 and change.

[wondersofwine]

An Amarone for $18! Wow! I thought I was getting a deal at $29 per bottle for another Amarone.

I once spent a full afternoon making a Greek meat sauce recipe. It makes enough to freeze some for later use but seemed like too much work even though tasty so I never repeated that recipe.

[hotwine]

We had plenty of the sauce left over, so had some last night with spaghetti and another bottle of this little beaut. Very, very nice.

Into the freezer went the balance of the sauce, to be used next week for house guests from the U.K. (One of our former exchange students, whose wedding we attended in Edinburgh in '04, is bringing her husband to spend a week with us. Suspect we might do some damage to the cellar inventory.)

[Duane Meissner]

Sounds delicious. I hope we have a nice Amarone at our next wine society meeting on March 11th (it's Italian night).

[winoweenie]

Hotsie it sounds like what you had and the bottle I posted on yesterday are both Ripasos'. The descriptors are joined aat the hip also. WW

[hotwine]

WW, according to Larousse, the red wine styles of the Valpolicella DOC include basic Valpolicella, Valpolicella Classico, Valpolicella ripasso. Recioto della Valpolicella, and Valpolicella Amarone. The Palazzo is ripasso, the de Feudis is Amarone. The descriptors are similar, with the Amarone being a more robust jug o' juice (but not similar to Port.... disagree with Larousse on that point).

Google search for De Feudis turned up restaurant pricing in the $50-$100 range (converting from sterling and euros). Definitely need to buy more.