Winemaker Notes
Trentadue produces this opulent dessert wine from Merlot grapes grown on their Geyserville Ranch. Borrowing from the traditions of port making, they add neutral grape spirits to stop fermentation, trapping a percentage of sugar in the wine. Once Chocolate Amore is finished aging and is ready for bottling, they infuse a tiny amount of natural chocolate extract to the final blend, creating the perfect marriage of food and wine.
This Merlot based, port-styled wine is great over vanilla ice cream or as a stand alone dessert.
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The Trentadue Chocolate Amore Red Dessert Wine is sweet, attractive, and nicely balanced. TASTING NOTES: This wine exhibits aromas and flavors of alluring dark chocolate and berries. Enjoy it with light desserts or all by itself. (Tasted: September 1, 2021, San Francisco, CA)
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Nearly a northern extension of Napa Valley, Alexander Valley starts just north of the small, Knights Valley, and is just a few minutes drive from the Napa town of Calistoga. It is Sonoma County’s hottest AVA. But the Russian River, which runs through the valley, creates cooler pockets and its soft, alluvial soil is ideal for grape growing, especially Cabernet Sauvignon. In fact, some believe that Alexander Valley Cabernets truly rival the best from Napa Valley and many of the heavy-hitter producers have largely invested here.
In addition to Cabernet Sauvignon, which makes up over 50% of plantings, Merlot and old vine Zinfandel thrive here. Ample, fleshy Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc dominate white wine production. Some old-vine plantings of Grenache have also been discovered and more recent experiments with Sangiovese and Barbera show great promise.