2004 Tommasi Amarone

[TheEngineer]

15% my @#$!%#@. No way. This thing is alcoholic and massive, and finished HOT. The label must be slightly off!

Not as thick as some of the other amarones that I've had but very ripe but not sweet, dense fruit, raisins, chocolate, and slightly bitter. long long finish.

[Thomas]

Yeah, more like 17-18%. I don't like it.

If I want Port, I'll buy Port.

Same way I feel about those Zinfandels of extra alc.

Amarone is not fortified, and it shouldn't taste that way.

[hotwine]

Sorry to read this about the '04 Tommasi Amarone. Am a big fan of their PG but know little of their reds.... although do have a couple of their '98 Val. Classico Superiore socked away. (Thought I recalled seeing a Tommasi Amarone in the cellar a while back..... might have just been the De Fuedis version. Now I'll have to go look, and check the alc on the VCS while there.)

[hotwine]

Couldn't find the '98s but did find a '97 Tommasi Amarone and it's 15% alc/vol; so is a '99 Remo Farina. Another '97 something-or-other was 14.5% (it's cold in there! and the lighting is poor for reading fine print on back labels.)

(The other '97 Amarone is a Capitel de Roari.)

[This message has been edited by hotwine (edited 12-16-2009).]

[Innkeeper]

Sent the following email to Dan Berger last Friday, and have not received a reply:

I enjoyed your article last week on the need for technical information on wine.
It would be good to have such data available, but I'm afraid the accuracy of
such data may be suspect. The one piece of data that is required on wine
bottles is percentage of alcohol. I have opened numerous bottle where this
information was obviously wrong. This ranges from understated percentages and
many California wines that leave a burn in your mouth with a listed percentage
of 14% which is probably closer to 16%; to those ubiquitous 12.5% that appear
mostly on European wines. If almost seems that when Europeans print a label in
English a compulsory entry is "Alcohol 12.5%." Why would we assume that other
data would be any more accurate?

[Thomas]

IK,

Most data on wine labels is allowed leeway and percentages, so you are right: it doesn't necessarily follow that more data is real information, unless TTB makes it so.

To me, the worst TTB information is the AVA. There are no growing parameters established for American vineyard locations, except for the ones that are self imposed.

So, what's the purpose of an AVA designation? Essentially, it says that grapes are grown in that location because they can be grown there.