2020 Tedeschi Marne 180 Amarone della Valpolicella Veneto 750 ml

Making the very finest Amarone requires technical skill, precision equipment, and a fanatical attention to detail that 98% of vintners in the region don’t have. The 2% who do—such as legends Romano dal Forno and Giuseppe Quintarelli—often charge $400 or more for their efforts.

Riccardo Tedeschi is also one of this region’s conscientious elite: His family spent a full decade studying the optimum drying conditions for their grapes, and installing state-of-the-art fans and humidity control. And all their attention to detail and knowhow shines through in the Marne 180 Amarone. The last vintage earned 97 points—outscoring 1,607 other Italian red wines—at the Decanter World Wine Awards, and after tasting this gorgeous 2020, we fully expect it to perform the same way. 

While they’re practicing today on the cutting edge, The Tedeschi family has been established in Valpolicella since 1630, and their modern iteration goes back four generations. Patriarch Lorenzo Tedeschi developed their single-vineyard wines starting in the 1960s, and today his son Riccardo is at the helm in the cellar. 

The other key to this wine’s delicacy and grace is its “Marne 180” vineyard, named for its white limestone marls and 180-degree view of its amphitheater-shaped slope. Our Master Sommelier Sur Lucero tells us, “Wines that come from soil with a high limestone content have this great purity of fruit. They're clean, yet still full of concentration.” 

We love this wine’s aromas of dark strawberries, cherries, fleshy plums, licorice, and kirsch liqueur, and cinnamon. It’s ripe and full, and it stunned our tasting panel with the kind of freshness, purity, and grace found in wines at two to ten times the price.