Marion· Valpolicella, Veneto
About the domain.
Marion sits on basalt, and you can taste it. Nicoletta and Stefano Campedelli farm eighteen hectares in the eastern Valpolicella, at Marcellise, on volcanic soils that set their wines apart from the limestone-grown bottles of the classico zone. They built the estate in 1988, and it remains in first-generation hands.
The Valpolicella Superiore is the wine I reach for first, dark and tight, dense without weight, finishing on a mineral bitterness that comes straight off the basalt. The fruit is Corvina and Rondinella, with a little Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend, raised in part in new oak and bottled unfined and unfiltered.
These are serious, structured Valpolicella from a producer who never chased the soft, commercial style. The volcanic site is the whole point.
Dark, volcanic, tight.
The Superiore from basalt soils. Dense but not heavy, with a mineral bitterness on the finish.