Musella, Amarone della Valpolicella

Over my many years of selling Italian wine, I’ve tended to reserve Amarone della Valpolicella for lovers of the richest, ripest red wines of the world—California Zinfandel drinkers and Aussie Shiraz drinkers are among the prime candidates for the Amarone experience, but even those with more light-leaning palates might occasionally be seduced by this most voluptuous of Italian reds.We’ve had many subscribers ask us why we don’t offer more Amarone wines, and I think of my own wine-drinking habits in formulating my answer: Much as I appreciate these profound wines, I sometimes struggle to find the right applications for them. Amarone, as voluptuously epitomized by today’s 2014 from Musella, is some seriously rich, heady stuff. The classic spot for it is with a cheese course, but lovers of big reds would welcome this one with a meaty braise of some kind. It’s a big wine, yes, but not so massive as to knock it out of main-course contention. This, I think, is critical: For me, the measure of