Villa De Winckels (Enoteca)

Via Sorio, 28 Marcemigo di Tregnago

37039 Verona Italy

tel +(39)045 6500133

December 2006

On Romano dal Forno’s recommendation my wife and I visited the lovely Villa De Winckels for lunch after our visit to the estate. Diners can choose to eat in the more formal dining room or the casual enoteca. We chose the latter. The cozy, small enoteca specializes in the traditional Veronese comfort foods. The wine list is deep and reasonably priced, and while the focus is naturally on local producers, there is also an extensive selection of wines from other regions. We started with a fresh sopressa sausage served atop steaming polenta, a perfect dish to whet the appetite on a cold winter day. The pasta e fagioli topped with fragrant Lake Garda olive oil was very tasty but the showstopper was a steak cooked perfectly to medium-rare and topped with a generous, almost excessive amount of black truffles. The food was absolutely delicious and a great match to our wines.

Dal Forno’s 2000 Valpolicella Superiore came across as being more evolved than the 2001. It also showed some rough edges at the outset and didn’t reveal its full potential until after it had been opened for a few hours. Powerful, rich and structured, it offered a gorgeous core of ripe dark fruit with expressive notes of smoke, earthiness, leather and tobacco that developed in the glass. The very early signs of tertiary notes gave the impression of a wine that won’t be especially long-lived by this producer’s standards. The 2001 Valpolicella Superiore, on the other hand, was stunning from the outset. It exploded from the glass with an exotic array of chocolate, licorice and sweet dark fruit, showing much detail and a finely chiseled personality, with more than enough stuffing to stand up to its 100% new oak. With some air the tannins softened somewhat but we clearly caught this vibrant, gorgeously pure expression of Valpolicella at a very early stage in what promises to be a long life.

Food:

Fresh sopressa sausage over polenta

Pasta e fagioli

Seared steak with black truffle sauce

Wine:            

2001 Dal Forno Valpolicella Superiore      93

2000 Dal Forno Valpolicella Superiore      91

--Antonio Galloni