Zenato Recioto Valpolicella 2018 500ml

Sergio Zenato founded the eponymous winery in 1960 in San Benedetto di Lugana, on the southern banks of Lake Garda — at the time an unfashionable corner of the Veneto for serious quality winemaking. Sergio's strategic call was to focus on Turbiana, the local name for Trebbiano di Lugana, a grape that the broader Italian wine trade had largely written off as a workhorse white. He championed Lugana DOC across the 1970s and 1980s, building the regional designation alongside the wine. The Zenato family now sits in the Famiglie Storiche association, the consortium of historic Amarone producers.

The estate has expanded across two adjacent regions: 95 hectares now divided between the Lugana base on Lake Garda's southern shore and Valpolicella Classica (the historic centre of Amarone production in the Veronese hills), plus a small 3.8-hectare parcel in Bolgheri on the Tuscan coast. The Lugana whites are the house's defining wine type — Lugana Riserva and the Sergio Zenato Riserva are among the longest-cellaring expressions of the variety. The Amarone della Valpolicella Classico Sergio Zenato Riserva and the Ripassa Valpolicella Superiore are the headline reds; the Ripassa technique (re-fermenting Valpolicella over Amarone pomace) was popularised partly by Zenato in the 1980s.

Dark chocolate and cherry desserts, tiramisu, aged blue cheese and nut tarts; a cellar-worthy Valpolicella dessert red for laying down 5-15 years.