Valpolicella Ripasso has all sorts of things going against it. It’s a blend of grapes from a country and region where the most highly regarded wines are single-varietal. The grapes it does blend are hardly household names. Ripasso bears the impression that at its best it is only a pale approximation of the region’s most prestigious wine, Amarone. And to those with steadfast allegiance to the truism that “great wines are made in the vineyard,” Ripasso is seen as the product of a procedural cheat rather than the grace of God.

I love these wines. The quibbles are accurate in an objective sense, but they dance around the obvious fact that Ripassos are both delicious and distinctive. And while Amarone della Valpolicella may be more intense, potent and stunning, Valpolicella Ripasso is clearly the more innately useful of the two, the more helpful – a shot of elegance for the practically minded.

First, some facts. There are wines in several countries that use the ripasso method, in which a fresh wine “repasses” over the used skins of a wine made from raisins, but Valpolicella Ripasso must be from northeastern Italy’s Veneto.

The broad Valpolicella region stretches from Bardolino on the eastern side of Lake Garda, until it meets Soave on the western edge of Venice. The zone, which has been enlarged over the past few decades, flattens as it heads south away from the Dolomite foothills; the best vineyards lie at higher elevations, on chalky soils in the Classico area. Most Valpolicella, of course, comes from higher-yielding, mechanizable vineyards in the warmer flatlands.

The grapes used in all Valpolicella wines are corvina, by consensus the most expressive and interesting, along with molinara and rondinella, and sometimes even lesser known varietals such as corvinone and oseleta. Corvina ripens latest but never amply, and on its own this grape rarely produces wines of highest ambition.

This is not to say they’re not splendid. Straight-up young Valpolicellas are refreshing light-medium red wines, with delicate cherry flavors and lively acidity. I love them slightly chilled, in warmer months, with a simple tomato salad or pasta.

To perform the noble red wine work of solving cold-weather problems, though, something more is called for. Hence, technique, process, work. Hence, the unavoidable fact that in order to produce memorable wine from corvina and friends in the Veneto, one needs to boost it.

The original boosting method was appassimento, a process of drying very ripe grapes to the point of plump raisins, in order to concentrate sugars and exaggerate flavors. This is how the grandly sweet Recioto della Valpolicella gains its intense implosive power. Amarone is the dry version, and was first discovered as a sort of failed Recioto, its sugars inadvertently fermented to full dryness; it has only been produced commercially for 60 or so years. Amarone’s concentrated sugars lead to big body and high alcohol. The grape-drying process itself metabolizes the acids and polymerizes the tannins, increasing these wines’ overall rich and silky bittersweet character.

Amarone is a class by itself – an often impenetrable class. Though there is tremendous stylistic variety among the great and not-great ones alike, they are special-occasion wines and not for everyone. Hence my description of usefulness, helpfulness and practicality in discussing Ripasso. In the latter wine, the expansive, soulful, comfort-food character of Amarone della Valpolicella transmits at a higher frequency, more straight-up drinkable.

Ripasso repasses a young Valpolicella wine over the dried-out skins of the grapes used to make Amarone. Since those skins contain remnant sugars, a Ripasso wine undergoes re-fermentation, which produces more body, flavor and alcohol. It trods, then, the middle path: a somewhat purpler, more savory and caramelized expression of the young-n-fresh Valpolicella; or a dialed-back, balanced, illumined likeness of Amarone. Either way you look at it, the Buddha might approve.

A Ripasso wine is surely not going to “make itself,” as some contemporary minimalist winemakers like to claim is possible from an extreme laissez-faire approach in the cellar. Ripasso is made wine, processed wine. You move the Amarone skins over to the wine, you decide on an appropriate regimen of oak-aging, and so on.

This is about the amount of process I can appreciate: The grapes are indigenous to the area, grown with care by the conscientious producers, and then treated to a procedure that only humans paying attention to what’s in front of them could devise.

Too much ripasso process masks the raw material beneath. But process can reveal as well as hide; good Ripasso brings the essence of Valpolicella to light. The trendy claim that treatment is inherently extraneous is facile. Usually essence doesn’t reside on the surface.

As usual when beginning to explore and compare various examples within a category, the question is whether to start with a “classic” style, or a more approachable one with a clearer link to what’s familiar, even if overall the latter is perhaps less distinctive.

This time at least, let’s begin with the former, since the effects of its oak treatment are less evident. That would be the Le Ragose Valpolicella Ripasso 2009 ($21) from the Classico region, in vineyards 1,200 feet above sea level. After a two-week fermentation in stainless steel with native yeasts, the wine ages until March, at which point it undergoes ripasso for seven days. Then it garners Superiore designation, by aging for an additional year in stainless steel followed by two years in large used oak casks, and then a further one year in bottle before release.

That’s a lot of time for this half-corvina wine to come together, and the seamlessness of its integration is what’s most immediately striking. Textural interplay is constant as you hold the wine in your mouth, mostly smooth but with angles and jabs, too.

For anyone used to Amarone’s relatively low acidity levels, Le Ragose is surprisingly zippy, as with a young Valpolicella.

The wine’s age and depth come in on flavors, which are inky and balsamic, branchy, distinctly redolent of both cherries and thyme/rosemary-grilled lamb. It’s also one of those wines you just want to keep smelling, a constant stream of earthy, leathery tones. Beyond particular aspects, Le Ragose is just immediately recognizable as a true, serious wine, an honest messenger of both place and process.

Another wine from the Classico region is the somewhat more polished and certainly better-known Santi Solane Valpolicella Ripasso 2012 ($15). It receives the ripasso earlier than Le Ragose, after which it goes directly into small oak casks for several months, then into larger neutral (used) casks before bottling. This entire process is relatively quick, which along with the use of new casks results in a softer, cleaner style.

It’s dry and woodsy, sharing with Le Ragose an aspect of weathered kindling, though vanilla-scented from the oak. Fresh and tangy, with more pronounced tannin presence, the ripasso character comes through in lots of dried fruit, and not primarily raisin; rather, dried apples, apricots, cherries and plums. The sweet-savory features of baking spice are balanced out by a toothsome bitterness reminiscent of amaro.

Recognize the etymological connection of that last note? Amarone’s bittersweet aura is steadily present in any good Valpolicella Ripasso. It’s a family affair.

Joe Appel is the wine buyer at Rosemont Market. He can be reached at:

soulofwine.appel@gmail.com

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