2016 La Poja
Estimated value
Buying options
Tasting notes
After wet spring and heavy rains at the end of May, the weather in Sant’Ambrogio improved significantly from the middle of June onwards. When the fruit was picked in the third week of October, the small berries had a juicy pulp and intense colour. Eight years on, the wine remains deep and opaque with generous primary nose of red cherry and iris. The palate is brimming with intensity too with primary raspberry, cherry liqueur and creamy chocolate notes followed by liquorice and tobacco. Broad and powerful in style, this is both rich and ripe with fleshy tannins alongside good balancing acidity. The wine finishes with a long, pleasing savoury bitterness.
Critic scores
Average Score
Monica Larner, Wine Advocate
Eric Guido, Vinous
More reviews and scores
The darkly alluring 2016 La Poja seduces with masses of plum sauce, macerated cherries and dark chocolate with lavender tones. Its silken textures wash across the palate with mineral-tinged dark red berries and savory spices, as sweet tannins collect toward the close. A saturation of primary tart fruit concentration lasts on the senses for well over a minute, as this tapers off long and lightly structured. The 2016 is simply stunning today and has a very bright future ahead of it as well. The La Poja is a varietal Corvina Veronese that is picked about fifteen days late; it does not go through the drying process like the Amarone. Any readers looking to experience the future of Valpolicella in the making, should consider tasting this.
This is one of my favorite wines from Allegrini because I am fascinated by some of Italy's monovarietal wines made from grapes we usually only see in blends. It's fun to deconstruct a wine, and tasting Corvina on its own teaches us what it adds or doesn't add to blended wine like Amarone. The 2016 Corvina Veronese La Poja is fresh and angular, with a solid center of gravity and good depth. It's not especially aromatic, although you do get dried cherry, plum and spice. It offers smoky tones of tar and earth, and there's balanced acidity on the close.