Damoli Valpolicella Classico Volavia 2022

Valpolicella is a crown jewel of northern Italian wine. Lake Garda to the west and the Dolomites to the north offer some of Italy’s most dramatic vistas, but Valpolicella itself is far more than the bit you drive through to get to other destinations. Clear running mountain rivers have spent millennia carving a series of deep valleys through these foothills, leaving a landscape of emerald green forest, steep hills and misty valleys, with farms and vineyards clinging to the terraced slopes. Damoli’s estate is in one of these valleys in the town of Negrar di Valpolicella, the traditional heart of the appellation. Like most wineries here, Damoli makes the full range of Valpolicella classics, the Brooding Amarones and the robust Ripassos, and they do those wines very well, but we find ourselves coming back again and again to this simple, delicious Valpolicella Classico. This is the emblematic red blend of Corvina, Rondinella and Molinara that’s so easy to drink that it rarely gets credit fo