Administrative area · Italy
Veneto
Italy’s highest-volume quality wine region, producing Prosecco, Soave, Valpolicella and Amarone.
About Veneto
The Veneto covers a very wide quality range, from industrial-scale Pinot Grigio and Prosecco to the concentrated, long-aged Amarone della Valpolicella.
Amarone is made by appassimento: grapes are dried on racks or in ventilated lofts for several months before pressing, concentrating sugar and flavour. The result is a dry wine of very high alcohol and dried-fruit intensity. Recioto is the sweet version, where fermentation is stopped before the sugar is used up.
Soave, from Garganega grown on volcanic soils around the town of the same name, was badly damaged by over-cropping in the twentieth century and has recovered as a serious, textured white in the Classico zone.
No authority delimits this name or attaches rules to it. A political unit — an Italian region, an English county, a US county — used as a wine area because that is how the industry and its readers talk about it, not because a wine authority delimited it. That does not make it less real or less useful — it means nothing legal follows from it, and you will not generally find it on a label as a controlled designation.
Grapes
Wines from here
sparkling
Prosecco
Tank-method sparkling wine from Glera: floral, pear-scented and fresh, with none of Champagne’s bready character — by design.
red
Amarone della Valpolicella
Dried-grape red of enormous concentration: 15–16% alcohol, dried-fruit intensity, and technically dry.
white
Soave
Garganega from volcanic hills near Verona: subtle, almond-scented and far better than its bulk-wine reputation.
white
Soave Classico
Soave from the original volcanic hillside zone — textured, saline and genuinely ageworthy.
red
Valpolicella
Light, high-acid, sour-cherry red from the hills north of Verona — the fresh counterpart to Amarone.
Climate
Moderated by Lake Garda in the west and by the Adriatic in the east, with the Alps sheltering the north.
These are influences on how a wine turns out, not determinants of it. Picking date, yield, vine age and every winemaking decision sit between the climate and the glass.
Places within it
- Bardolino — Light red and pale rosé from the shores of Lake Garda, made from the same grapes as Valpolicella.
- Conegliano Valdobbiadene — The steep hillside heart of Prosecco production, with DOCG status and a UNESCO-listed landscape.
- Prosecco DOC — A very large appellation across nine provinces of north-east Italy — and the reason a grape had to be renamed so that a place could be protected.
- Soave — Garganega grown on volcanic and limestone hills east of Verona — a wine badly damaged by its own success and now largely recovered.
- Valpolicella — The Corvina-based red zone north of Verona, and the home of Amarone and Ripasso.
What to eat, and how to serve it
Derived from this region’s signature styles. Each is listed separately, because a region does not have one serving temperature.
Amarone della Valpolicella
Serve at 16–18°C (cool room temperature).
Try with roast chicken, fillet steak or grilled chicken.
Approximate centroid: 45.50°, 11.60°. WineHQ stores coordinates only where it has them, and does not estimate boundaries it has not sourced.
Sources
Sources consulted
- Consorzio di Tutela della Denominazione di Origine Controllata Prosecco — Consorzio Prosecco DOC
- Italian DOP and IGP wine register — Ministero dell’agricoltura, della sovranità alimentare e delle foreste (MASAF)
- eAmbrosia — the EU geographical indications register — European Commission