Verona and Valpolicella Wine Tour

A standard tour from Verona is five to six hours, two estates, a light lunch, and a driver. You go into the Valpolicella Classica zone: the five communes of Negrar, Marano, Fumane, San Pietro in Cariano and Sant'Ambrogio, spread across hills between 100 and 500 metres, or into the Valpantena valley just east of it. The vineyards are trained on pergola veronese, the wide overhead canopy that shades the fruit, which is why the landscape looks different from Tuscany or Piedmont.

The tasting is a lesson in one technique. Four wines come out of the same three or four grapes: Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella, sometimes Molinara or Oseleta. Valpolicella DOC is made from fresh grapes: light, sour-cherry, 12 to 13 percent, a lunch wine. Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG is made from grapes dried for around 100 to 120 days, losing 35 to 40 percent of their weight, then fermented dry: 15 to 16.5 percent alcohol, glycerol-thick, bitter-edged, aged a minimum of two years and four for a Riserva. Recioto della Valpolicella DOCG is the same dried fruit stopped sweet, and it is the older wine: Amarone is essentially a Recioto whose fermentation was allowed to run to dryness, which is a happy accident that became a category in the twentieth century. Ripasso sits in between, a Valpolicella re-fermented on the drained Amarone skins for extra body.

The part worth planning around is the fruttaio, the drying loft. Bunches sit on bamboo racks or in stacked plastic crates in ventilated rooms from harvest until pressing. The rooms are full roughly from late September to January, with pressing usually in January or February, and empty the rest of the year. Almost nobody says this in a listing. A tour in July shows you a clean, silent, empty room with a photograph on the wall. A tour in November shows you 200 tonnes of grapes turning into raisins and smells of it. This is the single largest quality difference between a good visit and a mediocre one, and it is entirely under your control.

Two more honest points. First, tasting three Amarones at 16 percent before 1pm is not a tasting, it is a problem: spit, or make sure food comes with it, and do not drive. Italy's blood alcohol limit is 0.5 grams per litre, and zero for drivers licensed under three years. Second, check which valley you are being taken to. Bardolino and Custoza are on Lake Garda, 30 kilometres west, and Soave is 25 kilometres east; all three are sold as Verona wine tours and all three are entirely different wines. Bardolino in particular is a light, pale red that has nothing to do with Amarone, and people book it expecting the other thing.

Small-group tours from Verona covering two estates run $100 to $165 (roughly €95 to €155) for five to six hours with transport and tastings. Add a proper sit-down lunch and the range is $160 to $240 (€150 to €225). Full-day tours combining Valpolicella with Lake Garda or Soave are $180 to $280 (€170 to €260) and involve a great deal of driving.

Private driver-guide days are $420 to $750 (€390 to €700) per group of two to six, which is competitive at four people and the only sensible option if you intend to taste seriously and not drive.

Going direct with your own car, a cellar visit with a tasting of four to five wines costs €25 to €60 per person, booked by email. Amarone-focused verticals and older-vintage flights run €60 to €130. Bottle prices at the cellar door: Valpolicella DOC €8 to €15, Ripasso €14 to €25, Amarone €35 to €90 for current releases and well past €150 for single-vineyard and Riserva bottlings. Recioto is usually sold in half bottles at €25 to €45.

There are two right answers depending on what you want. For the drying lofts and the pressing, late October to early February: the fruttai are full, the cellars are working, hotel rates are low, and the valley is quiet. Late January and February add the pressing itself. Cold, often foggy, occasionally raw, and by a distance the most interesting version of this trip.

For weather and vineyards in leaf, late April to mid-June and September. Harvest itself, from mid-September, is a mixed proposition: the landscape is at its best but producers are working eighteen-hour days, and many estates restrict or cancel visits in those three weeks.

Two dates to avoid outright. Vinitaly, Verona's wine trade fair, occupies a week in April: it is trade-only, hotel prices in the city multiply, and the producers you want to meet are all at the fairground rather than at home. And the Arena opera season, roughly mid-June to early September, which fills the city every night and prices accommodation accordingly. July and August also put the valley above 33°C with nothing happening in the cellars.

Two routes, and they suit different people. GetYourGuide and Viator carry the small-group tours with transport from Verona, which is the right choice if you are not driving and want the logistics solved. Read the listing for the number of estates, the total duration, and whether lunch is a plate of cold cuts or a meal: the difference in value is large and the price often is not.

The better route, if you have a designated driver or a private car, is booking cellars directly. Almost every Valpolicella producer takes visits by email or through a form on their site, usually with 48 hours' notice, at fixed morning and afternoon slots, closed Sundays and often Saturday afternoons. Write in English, state the number of people, the date, and whether you want the Amarone flight. Expect a reply within a day or two. This gets you an hour with someone who made the wine rather than twenty minutes with a tasting-room host.

The Consorzio per la Tutela dei Vini Valpolicella publishes the list of member producers and runs promotional weekends: Amarone Opera Prima, the annual preview of the new vintage, is usually in late January or early February and is the one public event that lets you taste dozens of producers in one room. Dates shift; check the consortium's site for the current edition rather than assuming.

Book two to three weeks ahead for autumn weekends and Amarone Opera Prima. A week is enough otherwise. Say at booking if anyone in the group does not drink: most estates will arrange grape juice and a lower price, but not on the day.

Verona's Città Antica, inside the loop of the Adige, puts you within walking distance of the Arena, Piazza delle Erbe and the wine bars, and lets you take a tour that collects you from a central point. It is the obvious base and priced as such, dramatically so during opera season and Vinitaly.

Veronetta, across the river on the university side, is ten minutes' walk from the centre, noticeably cheaper, and full of student bars rather than tourist ones. Borgo Trento to the north is residential and quiet.

The better idea for a wine-focused trip is to sleep in the valley. San Pietro in Cariano, Fumane, Negrar, Marano and Sant'Ambrogio all have agriturismi and small hotels attached to working estates, at €90 to €180 a night, with vineyard views and the ability to walk back from a tasting. You need a car for anything else, and the hill roads are narrow.

Avoid basing yourself in Peschiera or on Lake Garda if Valpolicella is the point: it is 50 kilometres and an hour each way, and you will spend the day in a van.

Verona's cooking is heavier and stranger than Venice's, and it uses ingredients that surprise people. Pastissada de caval is a slow-braised stew of horse meat, and it is the signature dish of the city: that is not a translation error, and horse also appears as sfilacci, dried shredded and served over polenta or salad. Say so before you order for someone else.

Risotto all'Amarone is made with Riso Nano Vialone Veronese IGP from the paddy fields around Isola della Scala, which is a short, starchy rice quite different from Carnaroli. Bigoli are thick wholemeal spaghetti extruded through a bronze press, served with duck ragù or with an anchovy and onion sauce on fast days. Lesso con la pearà is boiled meat with pearà, a sauce of breadcrumbs, bone marrow, stock and an aggressive quantity of black pepper: it exists nowhere else and it is worth the order.

Gnocchi belong to Verona in a specific way: the city's carnival culminates in Venerdì Gnocolar, and gnocchi with tomato or with a smoked ricotta are on menus all winter. Monte Veronese DOP is the local mountain cheese, made from the Lessinia plateau north of the valley, sold young or as d'allevo aged over a year. Radicchio di Verona IGP and Pesca di Verona IGP mark late autumn and midsummer respectively.

For dessert, pandoro is Veronese and is a Christmas cake: the ones sold in cellophane in July are stock. Sbrisolona, the shattering almond crumble, comes from Mantua next door and is standard here, and it is the correct thing to eat with a glass of Recioto. Amarone with aged Monte Veronese or with a bitter chocolate is the other pairing worth trying.