The backbone of every Valpolicella wine, also called Corvina Veronese or Cruina. In 2010 the global planting was 7,495 hectares, all of it in the Veneto except 19 hectares in Argentina. The berries are small, low in tannin and colour but thick-skinned, which is exactly what the appassimento needs: the skins resist rot through 100 to 120 days on the drying racks. Wines are light to medium bodied with a crimson tone, high natural acidity, a bitter almond note and sour cherry on the finish. Under the Amarone rules Corvina and Corvinone together make up 45 to 95 percent of the blend. DNA work in 2005 showed Corvina to be a parent of Rondinella.
Long treated as a large-berried clone of Corvina, and named as though it were one, but ampelography and DNA profiling established it as a separate variety. Total plantings in 2010 came to 930 hectares, all in Italy save one hectare in Argentina. The bunches are winged and pyramidal, looser and larger than Corvina's, and they ripen later, into mid October. The bigger berries and looser bunches suit drying, which is why Corvinone has gained ground in Amarone blends. It is almost never bottled alone.
The third mandatory grape of the blend, at 5 to 30 percent under the Amarone rules. Almost all of the 2,481 hectares planted worldwide sit in the Veneto. DNA evidence shows Corvina to be a parent variety. Flavours are on the neutral side, but growers keep it for its reliable yields, its resistance to disease and the way it dries out cleanly on the racks for Recioto and Amarone. It always appears blended, never alone.
A red grape that adds acidity to Valpolicella and Bardolino blends. Italian plantings stood at 595 hectares in 2010, almost all in the Veneto, down by more than half from 1,301 hectares in 2000. The decline follows from its low colour extract and its tendency to oxidise, and Molinara is no longer compulsory in the blend. Estates that keep it use it for freshness, and it is occasionally blended with Merlot for rose.
A rare native of the Valpolicella that phylloxera nearly finished off in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and that low yields kept out of favour afterwards. Masi rediscovered and replanted it in the early 1980s, and it is now an approved minor blending variety in the Valpolicella denominations, with a handful of producers bottling it on its own. World plantings in 2010 came to roughly 15 hectares. DNA analysis places it close to Corvina, Molinara and Rondinella, alongside Dindarella and Pelara, as varieties that co-evolved in the same valleys.
A Veronese red first recorded growing in the province in 1818 by the botanist Ciro Pollini, and today a permitted blending variety in several Veneto DOCs including Valpolicella and Bardolino. Its synonyms Rossetta del Lago and Rossignola di Montagna prompted speculation that it descended from the near-extinct Lake Garda variety Rosetta di Montagna, but Jancis Robinson and Jose Vouillamoz record the two as distinct. It sits within the 25 percent of other authorised red grapes the Amarone rules allow.
