Italian red at a mostly Italian restaurant

Although owned and managed by Greek-American descendants, Luigi's has an Italian name and mainly Italian menu and mainly Italian wine list. I went there for dinner last night and enjoyed veal piccata and asked for potato as a side dish in place of the usual spaghetti and took home a piece of lemoncello cake to eat later. This restaurant celebrates wine and used to be a meeting place for the Fayetteville chapter of the American Wine Society. It was here I had my first sampling of a Tignanello. They feature free wine tastings on Thursday evenings and select one of the wines as Wine of the Week. I tried this week's selection which was the 2011 Allegrini "Palazzo della Torre" I.G.T. It is from Veneto region and is composed of 70% Corvina, 25% Rondinella and 5% Sangiovese, basically a Valpolicella blend. The restaurant is taking pre-orders for a case or half-case of the wine. Notes say the Allegrini family has been involved with grape farming and wine producing since the 16th century. 70% of the grapes picked from the Podere Palazzo della Torre are vinified immediately. The remaining 30% are left to dry until the end of December when they are vinified and then refermented with the wine from the fresh grapes giving the wine an extra dimension of richness and body. I was not in an analytical mood at dinner but enjoyed the wine with its fruitiness and extra element that did seem to give some depth and body to the final product. It was a light enough red to pair with the veal piccata where normally I might have ordered a white wine.

Thanks for the note!

Allegrini is a good producer, traditionally based but capable of adapting to modern approaches, and looking to use their assets in a way to make the wine interesting to newer drinkers---which means to say they maintain some of the old approaches but use new ones as well, which gives them an interesting "we're old world but we're willing to make new world styled wines" that taste good.

The "almost-Valpolicella"---by using Sangiovese in place of the sub-players of Molinara and Negrara, which once would have beens considered Tuscan heresy in Verona but obviously could add a lilt and cherry zing to the mix, is also firmly in the "Ripasso"---or "Baby Amarone" zone...an old and favored technique of using the dried and concentrated grapes to both raise the alcohol levels and at the same time add a fullness, a richness, and additional body and depth and complexity that is not generally associated with the light-bodied Bardolinos and Valpolicellas----in other words, figuring out a way to manipulate the grapes so as to make the wine what it naturally isn't. Which is cool as hell with me, because it makes some damned interesting wines, and keeps those locals from buying "foreign" wines from the despised Milanesi to fill that thirst void.

Thanks for the added info, Hoke.

have been drinking Palazzo della Torre for a number of years..seems to my palate, at least, that there has been a noticeable change in the way Allegrini has been making this wine over the years..I remember earlier vintages being bigger, rustic wines..the more recent versions seem to be smaller wines with less to offer, not sure if watered down is an appropriate descriptor or not but I have stopped buying this wine..just my 2 cents,,Wonder if they ramped up the production ???