Know your Valpolicellas ... Justinian's wine correspondent let loose in the vineyards of Veneto ... Thomas Becket and Mozart get together ... The perfect drop with stew and polenta ... Lots going on in the mouth ... Gabriel Wendler gets back to Italy
After a ten-year absence it was time to return to Italy. This time to Verona and the Veneto viticultural region of northeast Italy that also comprises Trentino-Alto Adige and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
The wonderful city of Verona, bisected by the Adige river, lies in the Veneto.
Shakespeare, who never left England, wrote two fictitious plays set in Verona: Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, a romantic comedy about infidelity.
Tourists cram the small cul-de-sac adjacent to the Piazza Erbe and marvel at the famous balcony where Romeo and Juliet supposedly declared their inviolable love for each other.
There are more compelling curiosities in Verona.
The Arco Della Costa, an archway with a very large, suspended whale bone leads into the Piazza die Signory, where historically lawyers once gathered. Legend has it the whale bone will fall when an honest person passes under it.
The Chiesa Santo Tomaso Becket is one of the many astonishing churches to be found in Verona - dedicated to Archbishop Becket, martyred by Henry II.
The author - with bottlesIt is home to a magnificent baroque grand organ which, according to the records, was played by the boy Mozart in 1769. Mozart was so enamoured by the quality of the instrument that he carved his initials into it.
Meantime, his imperious father, Leopold, was hawking the genius chosen by God around Europe like a performing circus monkey.
From curiosities to viticulture the Veneto demonstrates a broad range of wine styles categorised as Valpolicella, Soave and Bardolino.
Corvina, referred to as Corvina Veronese alongside Molinari, Rondinella and Garganega are the principal indigenous grape varieties of the region.
It was not until the early 1980s that internationally Italian wine began to be taken seriously. Today, some of the most outstanding and sought after wines are Italian.
In the Veneto names such as Masi, Allegrini, Bertani, Castaneda and Buglioni, are among the leading growers and winemakers producing world class wine.
Wine producers in Tuscany, Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria, Trentino, Friuli-Venezia, Umbria, Emilia-Romagna and in particular Sicily, are also producing wines of outstanding commercial quality. A general Italian wine renaissance has occurred since the early 1980's.
There styles of Valpolicella, conveniently described as basic, are Valpolicella Ripasso, Recioto della Valpolicella, and Recioto della Valpolicella Amarone.
Recioto della Valpolicella Amarone, Veneto's famous and unique wine that, unlike other Valpolicellas, is subjected to passito - a process or method that concentrates sugar and flavours by semi-drying the grapes over some four months.
Vinification consumes all residual sugar leaving the wine completely dry and significantly alcoholic, between 15.5-16%.
Amarone della Valpolicella has a corpulent mouth feel and powerful, complex black stone fruit dimensions, in a way reminiscent of an aged Barossa old vine shiraz. Surprisingly, the high alcohol is not intrusive, unlike some heavy Australian clarets that invoke a hot tin shed.
Hot - like some Australian clarets
Pastis Sada de Manzo con polenta is a traditional Verona dish - unlikely to be available at any trattorias near you. Amarone is the perfect wine with this dish as it complements the richness of the stew and the simplicity of the polenta.
Valpolicella Ripasso is made by placing the fermented wine in casks containing the lees from a prior batch of Amarone and left for up to three weeks to promote colour, body, and complexity. It is sometimes unfairly described as the poor cousin of Valpolicella Amarone .
Most impressiveRecioto Della Valpolicella can be sweet and sauterne- like.
Recioto di Soave die Capitelli, a dessert wine made also using the passito method, is a fabulous, fat, sweet wine suggestive of honey, cream, tropical fruits, and cinnamon.
Of the number of Amarone wines I sampled over six weeks in the Veneto I thought the Buglioni 2019 was the most impressive.
Italy once ruled the known world. In a sense she still does in the areas of food, wine, engineering, fashion, design, film, art, and architecture.
Her most regrettable historical blemishes were the dictatorship of Mussolini and, during the unification of Italy, Giuseppi Garabaldi's decision to permit the Pope to retain the Vatican following abolition of the Papal States.
As the famous lexicographer, Dr Samuel Johnson, observed: "A man who has not been to Italy is always conscious of an inferiority."
Gabriel Wendler is a criminal trial and appellate barrister at Seven Windeyer Chambers