Winemaker Notes
La Grola is excellent paired with red meat dishes, whether roasted or with dark sauces, and especially lamb and kid. It is also delicious with stewed or grilled mushrooms and with mild, aged cheeses.
Blend: 90% Corvina Veronese and 10% Oseleta.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Brambleberries, underbrush, bracken, cedar and loads of dark cherries and plums. Full body, fresh acidity and a tangy, medium-long finish. A very well poised red that’s beautiful to drink now, but should improve within a couple of years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 La Grola is a terrific wine, both food friendly and accessible. The blend is 90% Corvina with 10% Oseleta, which adds color and richness to the overall wine, thanks to the grape's small and compact berry size. You get terrific value here in a wine that has the aromatic intensity and textural fiber to stand up to barbecued meats or tri-tip. The fact that the wine's tannins are slightly more contained and soft means La Grola would beautifully match those spicy and smoky flavors. Some 200,000 bottles were produced. Rating: 92+
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Wine Enthusiast
A blend of 90% Corvina Veronese and 10% Oseleta, this alluring red opens with aromas of wild berry, tobacco and a whiff of coffee bean. It's elegant and full bodied, offering ripe plum, black cherry, star anise and ground pepper alongside taut fine-grained tannins. Drink through 2025.
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Wine Spectator
Elegant and harmonious, this medium-bodied red offers fine, creamy tannins and fragrant hints of spice and leather lacing the baked black cherry, date, dried thyme and mineral notes. Long and supple on the finish. Drink now through 2028.
The chief variety in Valpolicella and Amarone della Valpolicella of the Veneto region of Italy, Corvina contributes intense red cherry and blackberry along with a touch of tartness and tannins to the blend. It is especially well suited to the drying process required to make Amarone. Corvina is also the main grape variety in Bardolino, a light red from the southeastern side of Lake Garda, also in Veneto. Somm Secret—Because of the dark and almost black coloring of its grape berries, Corvina takes its name from the Italian word, corvo, a local, jet-black raven.
Producing every style of wine and with great success, the Veneto is one of the most multi-faceted wine regions of Italy.
Veneto's appellation called Valpolicella (meaning “valley of cellars” in Italian) is a series of north to south valleys and is the source of the region’s best red wine with the same name. Valpolicella—the wine—is juicy, spicy, tart and packed full of red cherry flavors. Corvina makes up the backbone of the blend with Rondinella, Molinara, Croatina and others playing supporting roles. Amarone, a dry red, and Recioto, a sweet wine, follow the same blending patterns but are made from grapes left to dry for a few months before pressing. The drying process results in intense, full-bodied, heady and often, quite cerebral wines.
Soave, based on the indigenous Garganega grape, is the famous white here—made ultra popular in the 1970s at a time when quantity was more important than quality. Today one can find great values on whites from Soave, making it a perfect choice as an everyday sipper! But the more recent local, increased focus on low yields and high quality winemaking in the original Soave zone, now called Soave Classico, gives the real gems of the area. A fine Soave Classico will exhibit a round palate full of flavors such as ripe pear, yellow peach, melon or orange zest and have smoky and floral aromas and a sapid, fresh, mineral-driven finish.
Much of Italy’s Pinot grigio hails from the Veneto, where the crisp and refreshing style is easy to maintain; the ultra-popular sparkling wine, Prosecco, comes from here as well.