Corte Giara Amarone Valpolicella Classico 750ml

Amarone is the great winter red of the Veneto, and it earns that reputation through method rather than muscle. The grapes, Corvina Veronese and Rondinella here, are picked ripe and then left to dry on racks for months, concentrating sugar and flavour before they are pressed in the new year. What comes out is dense, warming and unmistakably Italian.

Corte Giara is the Valpolicella range made under the Allegrini name in Fumane, and this Classico bottling expects ripe blackberry, liquorice and dried tobacco leaf, full bodied but held in an elegant frame, with oak kept deliberately subtle.

Give it an hour in a decanter. Serve it with braised beef, osso buco, pasta with a long-cooked meat sauce, or simply a wedge of aged Parmigiano at the end of a meal. This is a bottle for a cold night, a long table and no rush.