Ripasso

[brappy]

Had a tasting on Thursday night that consisted of about 9 cases of Italian wines. All wines were value wines, meaning under $20 a bottle with the exception of a couple at $22(retail pricing). Tasted through all wines while spitting during the day and brought about 5 cases of leftovers home. Had some friends over and we did a speed tasting (No spitting).

One of the best wines of the tasting was the Zenato Ripasso. An unbelievable QPR as I thought this wine was worth much more than the price. Soft, but vibrant fruit with a touch of vanillan and earth (dried currants were in there somewhere). Being opened all day I believe helped this wine show as well as it did. I was unaware that Ripasso was made in a method like Amarone. I guess you learn something new every day.

Funny story to go along with this one. The volume of wine was too great to have on our tasting table here at the house. So we had one table to hold the wines and the other to taste. When we got to the reds we decided to taste (quaff) 6 at a time. When the Zenato Ripasso came to the table, we were dicussing which one should go first. My wife, who tastes a load of wine every year but doesn't take it seriously, decided to choose the first wine of the flight. She looked at the bottles and said "I don't know about anyone else, but I'll start with the RIP--ASS--O". She had us all rolling.

mark

[winoweenie]

She put a small rip in mr shorts wif' dat-un!WW [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/wink.gif[/img]

[VouvrayHead]

Yep... I LOVE the Zenato Ripasso...
Sell tons of it at my store to customers who have no idea what the heck it is... they all come back happy.

It's not made exactly like Amarone...
They take the leftover Lees from a batch of Amarone and let the regular Valpolicella juice sit on 'em for a few weeks. So you get something half-way between Valpo and Amarone.

Did you get to try Allegrini's Valpo classico? That's one of my faves...

[Drew]

Yup, graces my cellar also.

Drew

[Innkeeper]

VH is right but sounds a little backwards. They don't make Ripassos out out Amarone but out of Valpolicella. They take a journeyman Valy, and pass (that is re-pass) it over the pomace of Amarone. Yes, it does come out tasting like something inbetween as well it might.

[VouvrayHead]

IK, what you saying 'bout my mama?

[Botafogo]

Sergio Zenato was in our store maybe 13 years ago and was very surprised that we had ten different Ripassos on the floor. He asked, "so people like that?" and we told him it was one of our largest selling categories and our instant recco in place of over priced Merlot for folks who wanted a softer wine.

Two vintages later, he started making one himself. His is delicious but there are many available that are even better both in absolute terms (Vaona, Villa Speroni, Baltieri) and QPR (Salvalai le Monile).