Why I changed my mind about Valpolicella: a day at Allegrini

It just so happens that almost none of my trips end without a winery visit. No matter how busy I am, no matter how little time I have, my feet somehow find the way to the region’s best vineyards. The only real exceptions are those points on the map where grapes simply do not grow at all, and making wine becomes a small miracle of logistics and stubbornness.

So it is easy to guess that when I come to Italy, even for a weekend, one of the days is reserved for cellars, conversations with winemakers, and tasting whatever the new season has brought. I truly feel lucky with my profession.

That is exactly what happened this time. Between watching figure skaters at the Olympic events in Milan, I finally took the drive I had been planning for years: a visit to one of Valpolicella’s most respected estates, Allegrini. I had a few reasons. A family history spanning generations, consistently high recognition, and, very personally, my own desire to understand Valpolicella beyond its loudest star, Amarone. To be honest, apart from Amarone, Valpolicella wines were never my first choice. I wanted to taste with an open mind and see what I had been missing.

You leave Verona and, almost immediately, the air changes. The city’s elegant geometry loosens its grip, the hills begin to fold into one another, and Valpolicella starts to look like what it really is: a living agricultural amphitheater. Vines are everywhere, but not in a neat, postcard way. They appear between olive trees, alongside stone walls, around small houses that seem to have been there forever.

Allegrini is based in Fumane, right in the heart of Valpolicella Classica. And the closer you get, the more the landscape turns cinematic: soft ridgelines, flashes of cypress, and that unmistakable northern Italian light that makes even winter feel like a promise.

I arrived with that slightly nervous excitement you get when you finally meet a place you have been reading about for years. At the gate, the energy level immediately went up, because Silvia was there.

Silvia, and the kind of welcome you cannot fake.

Silvia is the type of person who makes you stand a little straighter. Warm, fast, focused, full of movement and ideas, she has that rare mix of authority and ease that only happens when someone genuinely loves what they do. Within minutes, it felt less like a formal visit and more like being taken into someone’s world.

And with Allegrini, the “world” is not just a tasting room. It is vineyards, slopes, exposures, decisions made season after season, and a deep family continuity. The Allegrini agricultural estate traces its roots in Fumane back to 1854, and Giovanni Allegrini is credited as a key figure in pushing quality forward in the 1960s.

You can read those facts anywhere. What you cannot read is the feeling of being driven out into the hills, stopping, stepping into the vineyard, and suddenly understanding why this region can be both misunderstood and unforgettable.

La Grola and the beauty of precision

One of the names that matters here is La Grola, a historic Allegrini vineyard in Sant’Ambrogio di Valpolicella. It sits around 310 meters above sea level, with a southwest exposure, and soils of clay and limestone. That combination sounds technical on paper. In real life, it looks like quiet confidence: structured ground, stony brightness in the soil, and vines that seem to know exactly why they are here.

This is the moment when Valpolicella stops being a label and becomes a place. Hills matter here, not as a romantic concept, but as a practical one: airflow, sun, water stress, slower ripening, and the kind of natural tension in the grapes that can make wines feel alive rather than simply rich.

And then we moved higher, toward a small plot that feels almost like a private secret.

La Poja is Allegrini’s iconic Corvina, and it comes from a triangular, limestone white plot surrounded by cypresses, with Lake Garda only a few kilometers away. The vineyard is about 3 hectares at roughly 320 meters, with vines more than 40 years old. It is 100 percent Corvina Veronese.

Standing there, you understand why some wines become symbols. The site itself has a kind of clarity, like it is designed to strip everything down to essentials. Corvina can be generous, but it can also be precise. La Poja is built for precision.

Later, when I saw the bottle again, it was like recognizing a face from a powerful conversation. And yes, I have a photo of my personal favorite, the 2019 La Poja. The Coravin on top is not a prop, it is a promise: the kind of wine you want to return to, slowly, on your own time.

Why Amarone became the “star”, and why the story is changing Valpolicella’s global fame has long been tied to Amarone, the powerful, dry red made with the appassimento method, where grapes are dried after harvest before fermentation. That drying concentrates sugars and compounds, and the result is typically a richer wine with higher alcohol, often around 15 percent.

It is not hard to see why Amarone became the headline: it is dramatic, intense, memorable, and it travels well in reputation. But when one style becomes the only narrative, a region risks being reduced to a single personality trait.

This is where Silvia’s perspective felt refreshingly honest. If critics and markets talk only about Amarone, people forget that Valpolicella is a whole ecosystem, not a one note performance. And right now, the wider wine world is rediscovering the appeal of lighter, fresher Valpolicella styles, wines with drinkability, energy, and real daily relevance.

For me, this is not just a trend. It is common sense. Wine should not be reserved for special occasions only. It should be accessible, emotionally, culturally, financially. Quality cannot live only at the top, it has to exist across the spectrum, including the bottles you open on a Wednesday.

The tasting, where theory turns into emotion

Back at the table, the tasting became a kind of gentle argument against my own bias.

Valpolicella, when done well, is not “less” than Amarone. It is simply different. It has a different purpose, a different rhythm, a different kind of beauty. And once you taste it in context, after walking the vineyards and hearing the thinking behind the work, you stop judging it by the wrong standards.

Then came La Poja, my clear favorite. There is a seriousness to it, but not heaviness. It feels sculpted rather than extracted. Officially, the wine is aged in new Allier barriques for about 20 months, then in large Slavonian oak, followed by bottle ageing. That explains part of the polish. The rest is the site, and Corvina speaking without needing to shout.

It was the kind of wine that makes you pause mid sentence. Not because it is “big”, but because it is exact.

A final thought, and a gentle challenge

If you have tried Valpolicella once and decided it is not for you, I understand. Many people have. The region’s reputation has been shaped by extremes, by the gravitational pull of Amarone, by the temptation to treat power as the only proof of quality.

But Valpolicella is changing, and maybe our perception should change too.

Try again. Start with a producer who treats the “everyday” wines with respect and makes the top wines with restraint, not ego. Start with Allegrini.

Because once you taste a truly good Valpolicella, the kind that carries the hills, the light, the limestone, and that unmistakable Verona area soul, you stop asking whether it is famous enough. You just want another glass.