Half Passito, half sparkling: in Valpolicella, There’s a surprising wine produced by just one winery

Valpolicella base and superiore, Ripasso, Amarone, and Recioto. Navigating through the various types offered by the renowned Veronese appellation is no easy task. The Valpolicella Wine Consortium (which recently celebrated its centenary) knows this well, as it has been working for years to refine the correct segmentation while avoiding overlaps that could confuse the market.
However, from the latest edition of Amarone Opera Prima comes a surprise that shakes everything up: a Recioto Metodo Classico, a unique wine that, even in name alone, seems like an oenological oxymoron—bringing together concepts and techniques that appear fundamentally at odds. Sparkling wine made from dried grapes: a fusion of contrasts that revives the classical rhetorical tradition, calling to mind famous paradoxes like “lucid madness,” “silent tumult,” or “burning ice.” The drying process and the secondary fermentation in the bottle—two production methods that are usually distinct, if not outright antithetical, yet both defined by their slow and costly nature—come together to create a strange ‘creature’ that could have emerged from a fantasy oenology manual inspired by Borges.
We’re talking about the Recioto Metodo Classico Valpolicella DOC (1998 vintage) from Villa Rinaldi, a Veronese winery based in Soave.

Once upon a time, there was Recioto undergoing refermentation

“The idea comes from my father Rinaldo, who started producing metodo classico wines in the 1970s and sadly passed away a few years ago. But this wasn’t just my father’s whim. The true and traditional Recioto of Valpolicella was originally made through refermentation. Historically, farmers made it sparkling: the process was tied to the lunar phases and involved adding wheat grains to encourage the enzymes that would facilitate fermentation. Then, this tradition was lost: a sweet sparkling wine undergoing refermentation is difficult to control and, above all, to sell.”
Speaking is Cinzia Rinaldi, Rinaldo’s daughter, who, along with her three siblings, runs this unique winery.

Villa Rinaldi produces 100,000 bottles—divided between sparkling wines and Amarone—but doesn’t own any vineyards. Instead, it relies on five grape suppliers from Valpolicella for its production of Veneto’s king of reds, and several suppliers from Alto Adige for its sparkling wines. A French-style approach. “We are a maison de négoce, my father was a craftsman,” explains Cinzia.

The sparkling Recioto bears the family’s signature. “My father dedicated his entire life to metodo classico. His experiments led him to recreate that historic Recioto. It’s allowed under the Valpolicella production regulations, but no one makes it anymore because it’s so difficult. Today, the responsibility has passed to my brother Alberto, who is an oenologist. He knows how to do it and safeguards our history,” Cinzia continues.

A long and complex production process

This is a rare wine, having been released in just two vintages: 1997 and 1998 (in 1999, all the grapes were vinified for Amarone).
“If all goes well,” assures Cinzia, “we’ll release the 2000 vintage around June. Our policy is that if the wine needs more time, we let it sit. After all, it’s a special-occasion wine, and we sell very little of it.”

The production process is indeed lengthy and intricate. The Corvina, Rondinella, and Molinara grapes undergo drying until January, followed by long ageing in new French oak barriques, then bottle fermentation with added sugar and yeasts, and finally 60 months on the lees.

“Our Recioto is difficult to make and requires a lot of work,” says Cinzia, “but it rewards you in the tasting. Creamy and intense, it stands as an absolute protagonist that doesn’t need to be paired with an elaborate dessert. I personally love it with blue cheese or a piece of dark chocolate—it holds its own thanks to its body and structure. It tastes of sour cherry, dried fruit, spices, and chocolate. For my father, it was a treat. There’s an elderly couple who regularly buy our Recioto, and they make a bottle last for months—it’s their moment to sit and chat.”

Yet, it remains a paradoxical wine. “Today, in metodo classico sparkling wines,” Cinzia notes, “there’s a trend towards absolute dryness. Here, however, the fine bubbles blend with a delicate, nuanced, and incredibly long-lasting sweetness. The carbon dioxide enhances the acidity—this wine should be enjoyed in wide coupe glasses where more air can circulate. True sweetness is about balance: clean, never cloying, and that’s where it shines.”

The crisis of sweet wines doesn’t help

The tasting confirms all of this, but sadly, the market has pushed sweet wines to the margins. Producers don’t know what else to do to bring them back into the spotlight. In Valpolicella, several other wineries say they stopped producing this wine decades ago.

Cinzia Rinaldi admits: “We live in an era where sweet wines are not appreciated. Who knows, maybe one day they will regain favour with drinkers. But right now, I don’t know how to market them. Perhaps restaurants should promote them more, avoiding the mistake of pairing sweet desserts with a brut sparkling wine—that’s a terrible combination!”

Credit goes to the Valpolicella Consortium, then, for showcasing this surprising 1998 Recioto Spumante during Giancarlo Perbellini’s lunch at the Teatro Filarmonico on 31 January, as part of Amarone Opera Prima. Who knows whether it will remain a one-time event, with the strong possibility that this one-of-a-kind sparkling wine from dried grapes will soon return to obscurity.

“It’s a wine for true enthusiasts. For my father, it was a passion project. We’re a very small winery, certainly not a headline name. We’ve never thought about involving other producers in making this type of wine. Besides, the Consortium already does a great job. I know some producers are experimenting—some have asked me about it. We have hope.”

And we, who have had the pleasure of tasting it, hope too—that this strange half-passito, half-sparkling creation doesn’t remain just a solitary, unrepeatable character in a fantasy oenology textbook.