Day 1 - Beautiful aroma of dried fruit and with a zing of black pepper. On the tongue smooth fruit with a hint of raisin, as you'd expect from the partial dried grape thingy and toasty oak. This is the first Amarone I have tried and it is right up my street.

Day 2 - Where has the fruit gone? Very little on the aroma or taste. It seems quite tannic. This was great the day before, but now it is average at best. You could see why it won a Decanter Trophy. I don't suppose the judges tasted it over a number of days. Drink in one sitting is my advice.

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tribs

Glad you tried these. Many moons ago I use to acquire the odd Recioto della Valpolicella Amarone from Peter Dominic wine merchants. Customers did not know what they were, so I could acquire them when the store were desperate to move them.

There are two main styles, The dry one that you enjoyed, and the Recioto which is a semi sec version, and which has in particular, a great and quite powerful figgi fragrance. The situation with both of them, is that one needs an Italian Mama influenced supper party to finish them. Many quests are needed, serve the recioto at cellar temp, good with a fruiti and spicy Panatoni at the end of the meal, or as an alternative to a desert course.

Only the very best ones seem to age well. The traditional bottle is a tall tube shape with shoulders leading to a cork width neck.

Its been quite a while, if I see a proper one in a sale somewhere, I should take another.

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Duncan