Grandi Vini by Joseph Bastianich

Author:Joseph Bastianich [Bastianich, Joseph]
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-71976-8
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2010-11-08T16:00:00+00:00

Recioto della Valpolicella Classico TB—TOMMASO BUSSOLA

TOMMASO BUSSOLA WILL tell you that his Recioto is one of the most intriguing Italian sweet wines. Rare and with indefinable elegance and power, his style of wine is born from tradition and necessity, not innovation and fancy.

By 1986, wine was being made in every region in Italy. Practically anyplace that would produce good-quality grapes was covered with grapevines. But if we were to choose a true enological phenomenon of the past ten years, it would have to be Amarone. Until 1996, barely 4 million bottles of Amarone were produced per year. By 2004, production had already risen to 12 million, and in 2006, it reached an all-time high of 16 million bottles. Making Amarone is not a simple task, nor is Amarone easy to drink. Amarone is made from dried fruit and can reach alcohol levels of 16 percent or more. The huge increase in consumption is primarily due to the marketing of the wine and the region. Few people know that Amarone is actually a by-product of another wine called Recioto, which is made in the same part of the Veneto using the same grapes: corvina and rondinella. Recioto is a sweet dessert wine with residual sugar levels easily reaching 100 grams per liter. Before modern technology came along, sweeter wines could age for longer periods of time than wine with less sugar. Compared with the dry red wines of the area, which had to be much more stable if they were to last through the years, the high levels of residual sugar in Valpolicella wines preserved quality longer. Before the advent of sulfites and many of the other physical and chemical techniques that are now available to make winemaking much more simple, Recioto was really the main wine of this area. Now the production is in the hands of some of the great masters of our time who have contributed enormously to the increasing quality of the wine. The production of Recioto didn’t increase exponentially like that of its “younger brother,” Amarone. It is very complicated and expensive to make Recioto. Additionally, it is equally as complicated to reach a large market and ultimately too expensive to compete on a global level. What we have, therefore, is a rare wine, reserved for special occasions.

Tommaso Bussola is the son of peasants who had very little property to their name. He began working in 1977, at a very young age, at his uncle Giuseppe’s winery. The first years of his apprenticeship were dedicated to unraveling the secrets of the land and, above all, mastering winemaking in the appassimento (natural grape-drying) style. Only in 1983 did he decide to take the big step of beginning to grow grapes on his own property. He began to apply the same philosophy that he learned from his uncle, but at the same time he began to experiment with some new techniques. Around ten years passed before Tommaso decided to create his own cellar and began barrique-aging his wines for the first time.

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