INSIDER'S PICK: 2021 F. lli DEGANI VALPOLICELLA RIPASSO CLASSICO SUPERIORE $21.99

To help boost the mood for the impending holiday season, we're featuring a wine from our recent Thanksgiving Wines email, to give you a chance to taste one of our recommendations for yourself ahead of the Big Meal. Valpolicella in and of itself is a great choice, one of the great everyday food reds of the Veneto region. The 'Ripasso' designation helps to take it up a notch, combining the freshness of Valpolicella with the famous dried grape wine of the region, Amarone. When the raisiny grapes are being pressed to make Amarone, the winemaker has to be more gentle than usual to avoid breaking the seeds that can add unwanted bitterness. This leaves a lot of untapped flavor in those pressings, which can be unlocked by steeping the pressings in regular Valpolicella wine (which has gone through the fermentation process while the Amarone grapes were drying out). The bump in character is immediately noticeable, but at only a small fraction of a price increase. Deep mahogany in color, with lots of dark cherry and raspberry fruit on the nose and some dusty cocoa, rich with a bit of savory poking through. The palate has great weight with just a touch of raisiny grip to the tannins, mostly plush and velvety that gets lots of the raspberry tones across the tongue, but no sense of sweetness to it at all, even a hint of tartness to the finish. A bit fleshier than many wines on the Thanksgiving list we sent out, but the relative silkiness of texture in with the richness of the fruit won't overpower any other dishes at the table.

---