Amarone vs Ripasso is the question that comes up nearly every week at the counter, usually from someone holding two bottles and wondering why one costs three times the other. That price gap is the whole story of this piece, because Valpolicella, Ripasso, Amarone and Recioto are four different wines made from the same grapes — mostly Corvina, Corvinone and Rondinella — and every step up in price buys a step up in what happens to the grapes after picking, not a better hillside. Think of it as a ladder where each rung costs the winemaker more time, more risk and more lost juice. By the end of this you’ll know where Ripasso really sits on that ladder, how to judge whether one’s worth its price, and which bottle earns its place on a Tuesday versus a proper occasion.
Same grapes, four wines: the ladder explained
Valpolicella is a red wine zone north-east of Verona (the name, so the story goes, is a mash-up of Latin and Greek meaning “valley of many cellars”). Five different DOC and DOCG wines come off the same hills, from the same blend — and the ladder between them is built on technique, not geography.
Here’s the whole system in one breath, and it’s worth committing to memory: Valpolicella is the grape fresh; Ripasso is the grape’s second pass; Amarone is the grape dried; Recioto is the grape dried and left sweet. Basic Valpolicella is fermented normally, cherry-bright, the sort of thing you’d happily serve slightly chilled. Ripasso takes that young wine and gives it a second life on the leftover skins of Amarone or Recioto. Amarone dries the grapes first, then ferments them fully to dryness. Recioto dries the grapes too, but the fermentation is stopped or falters before all that sugar converts, leaving it sweet. Same blend, four entirely different personalities.
| Wine | What happens to the grapes | Min. ABV | Ageing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valpolicella | Fresh, no drying | — | Little to none |
| Ripasso | Refermented on dried-grape skins | 12.5% (13% Superiore) | 1 year |
| Amarone | Dried 100-120 days, fermented dry | 14% (often 15%+) | 2 years (4 for Riserva) |
| Recioto | Dried, fermentation stopped sweet | 12% | Varies, often artisan |
Once you can see the ladder, the price tags on the shelf stop looking arbitrary — and choosing your rung becomes the fun part.
Is Ripasso similar to Amarone?
Yes, in method and muscle — no, in finished intensity. Ripasso is made by taking unpressed, still-sugary skins left over from an Amarone or Recioto fermentation and adding freshly pressed young Valpolicella to them for a second maceration; the leftover yeast finishes off the remaining sugar, and 10-15% actual Amarone or Recioto wine gets blended in for good measure. What you end up with is Valpolicella wearing Amarone’s jacket, not Amarone itself.
The process pulls extra colour, tannin and alcohol out of those spent skins — it’s essentially recycling flavour that would otherwise go to waste. Traditionally it’s aged in large wood vessels, though plenty of producers use new barriques instead, which brings a sweetish vanilla note and sometimes a touch of residual sugar that straight Valpolicella never has. That’s a stylistic choice, not a rule, so bottles vary more than you’d expect from something with one name on the label.
What Ripasso doesn’t have is Amarone’s drying time or its two years minimum in cellar. It’s a shortcut to some of the richness, at a fraction of the wait and the price — which is exactly why it took off. If you’ve been eyeing Amarone but wincing at the number on the shelf ticket, a Ripasso Superiore is the honest way to find out whether that whole style of wine is for you before you commit the bigger money.
Is Ripasso considered a high quality wine?
Genuinely, yes, at its best — Superiore-grade Ripasso can be full-bodied, structured, and a proper step up from basic Valpolicella for a modest premium. But quality here depends heavily on restraint, and that’s the honest caveat worth knowing before you spend.
Production tells the story. Trade figures track Ripasso going from around 7.5 million bottles in 2007 to more than 30 million by 2020 — largely eating into straight Valpolicella, which fell by roughly half over the same stretch. That’s a wine that went from curiosity to category leader inside a couple of decades, and rapid growth always tempts a few producers to chase the trend rather than the balance.
Trade opinion is split on the result. Some argue the wines have got heavier and less charming as growers reduce the amount of Molinara in the blend — a lighter, high-acid grape — to make something closer to “baby Amarone.” Others point to good Ripasso, and to the IGP wines blending standard and dried-grape wine, as genuinely good to very good, mid-to-premium quality. Both are true, depending on the bottle in your hand. Read the back label, look for Superiore, and don’t assume price alone tells you which camp you’ve landed in — that one word on the label is the closest thing this category has to a reliable signpost.
Is Amarone the best Italian wine?
Amarone is Valpolicella’s most serious claim to fine-wine status — but “best” isn’t really how wine works, and I’d rather give you the shape of the argument than a false ranking. It’s powerful, dry, high in alcohol (often 15%+) and built to age, with a DOCG some in the trade think is overdue for review.
The engine behind it is appassimento: selected bunches dried for 100-120 days until roughly a third of their weight is lost as water, concentrating sugar, acid and tannin, and softening the mouthfeel with extra glycerol along the way. That drying is also why good Amarone carries such high acidity alongside its richness — it’s what keeps a 15% wine from tasting heavy-handed. We go into the drying process itself in more depth in Amarone and the art of dried grapes.
Set against Barolo or Brunello, though, Amarone is playing a different game entirely — different grape, different technique, different sense of place. If you want that full comparison across Italy’s big reds, Italy’s great reds: Barolo, Brunello and Chianti, explained lays it out properly. And if you spot “Riserva” on an Amarone label, that’s not marketing flourish — it’s a legal minimum of four years’ ageing, which What does Riserva actually mean on an Italian wine label? explains in full. When you do buy one, buy it for an evening that deserves it — Amarone opened casually is money spent on ceremony nobody attended.
How to choose and serve them
Match the wine to the Tuesday you’re actually having, not the one you wish you were having.
- Weeknight pasta, pizza, a bit chilled — basic Valpolicella. Sour-cherry, light, no ceremony required.
- Sunday roast, richer ragù — Ripasso. Enough body to stand up to slow-cooked meat without needing a special occasion. For my money this is the sweet spot of the ladder: most of Amarone’s warmth at a Sunday price.
- Braises, aged hard cheese, a proper celebration — Amarone. Give it a big glass and let it open up; it rewards patience more than any wine on this list.
- Something sweet at the end of the meal, in a small glass — Recioto, poured sparingly, alongside dried fruit or a firm blue cheese.
Buy one rung above what the evening strictly needs and you’ll rarely regret it; buy two rungs above and you usually will.
What it costs in shape
You don’t need exact figures to see the pattern: price climbs with drying time and lost yield. Dried grapes lose around a third of their weight to water before they’re even pressed, so a hectare that makes generous Valpolicella makes far less Amarone — that scarcity, plus two-plus years tying up cellar space, is what you’re paying for as you move up the ladder. Even the grape blend is shifting with the climate: Corvinone, more resistant to drought stress than Corvina, has been allowed in greater proportion recently, partly to protect future harvests as summers get hotter. In other words, you’re not paying for a fancier label — you’re paying for evaporated water and occupied barrels, which is a rather more honest bill than most wine premiums.
Questions customers ask us
What wine is closest to Amarone? Ripasso, quite deliberately — it’s fermented on Amarone’s own skins and gets a top-up of real Amarone or Recioto wine. Recioto shares the identical dried-grape starting point but is finished sweet rather than dry, so it’s close in raw material but a different style on the palate.
The merchant’s last word
I sold Ripasso as “cheap Amarone” for years before I actually tasted a proper Superiore side by side with a mediocre one — turns out that shorthand does neither wine any favours. They’re related, not interchangeable, and the fun is in tasting where each one earns its place on your table. Come and browse the Italy cellar and we’ll find your rung on the ladder.
