Appassimento red
Grapes dried on mats for three to four months before pressing, concentrating everything. The method behind Amarone and Recioto, and the only route to that texture.
The numbers
Each bar drawn against all 30 styles
Alcohol
14-16.5%
14% - 16.5%
Titratable acidity
5.5-7 g/L
5.5 - 7
pH
3.4-3.8
3.4 - 3.8
Residual sugar
4-12 g/L
4 - 12
Serve at
16-18 C
Worth opening after
3 years
and it keeps improving to roughly 20 years
Sulphite at pH 3.60
31 mg/L
free SO2, for 0.5 mg/L molecular
What goes wrong
Drying in the wrong air. Cool, dry and ventilated makes Amarone; warm and humid makes mould, and there is no rescuing a mouldy drying loft.
At least one of these figures is set by an appellation or labelling rule somewhere. The rest are typical published analyses of commercial examples.