Falezze Luca Anselmi

Four grapes before the cellar

Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella and Oseleta set the blend before Luca Anselmi, winemaker at Falezze Luca Anselmi in Illasi, begins the cellar work. The estate sits in the Valle di Mezzane, inside the Valpolicella DOC, and its scale keeps the work close to the family line rather than to volume. Anselmi is the current custodian of a three-generation house with more than 85 years behind it, a span long enough for method to become habit and for habit to be tested by harvest after harvest.

The lineage here is not dressed up as nostalgia. It remains practical: estate fruit, traditional Valpolicella varieties, a cellar vocabulary anchored by Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG, Valpolicella Superiore Ripasso, Valpolicella Superiore and the AMARONE RISERVA 2012. Anselmi has described the work in plain terms, tied to limited production and to the rhythms of nature and the seasons. That sentence matters because it places the maker inside the calendar. Pruning, drying, fermentation, élevage and release do not move because the market is impatient. They move when the grapes, skins, barrels and bottles have finished their part of the work.

Appassimento with measured patience

The house works in the Valpolicella language of drying, re-fermentation and time in wood. For Amarone, the grapes undergo natural appassimento before maturation, a method that asks for air, selection and restraint before the must ever reaches its full shape. The stated Amarone blend gives the cellar its proportions: Corvina at 30%, Corvinone at 40%, Rondinella at 15% and Oseleta at 5%. Those figures say more than a tasting note. They show a wine built with Corvinone in the lead, Oseleta present as a small but deliberate part of the structure, and the traditional grapes kept in their regional grammar.

The aging is just as explicit. Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG spends 24 months in barrique, then 24 months in bottle before release. Ripasso here follows the Valpolicella practice of a second fermentation on Amarone skins, taking color, tannin and depth from material that has already carried the appassimento season. The estate also makes numbered artistic editions, including Le SessantaDue Dogaresse, a collection of 62 bottles with unique subjects. Even that gesture stays close to the bottle rather than away from it.

The quiet of the Mezzane Valley

The cellar belongs to a quiet estate setting rather than a public spectacle. Around Falezze, the Mezzane Valley places vines among olive trees, woods and the older agricultural texture of Illasi. The tasting room is intimate by nature of the production; the scale of the place encourages attention to the glass, not movement through a crowd. In a family-run winery, the room often carries the same discipline as the cellar: few distractions, direct conversation, and the sense that the work outside is never far from the table.

That closeness is part of the place’s authority. The vineyard, cellar and tasting room do not read as separate departments; they sit in sequence. Fruit comes from the estate’s land in the Falezze zone, the cellar follows the established method, and the finished wines return to the table as Valpolicella rather than as a general red from Veneto. The bottle is still the bottle, especially the Amarone della Valpolicella DOCG resting through its 24 months in glass.