Giuseppe Quintarelli's sweet passito red from the Valpolicella hills at Negrar. Air-dried Corvina aged years in Slavonian oak: garnet, soft and broad, with cocoa, raisin and candied cherry. A rare dessert wine for chocolate and aged cheese.
Cocoa, raisin and candied cherry from Corvina-led grapes dried for months at Negrar, then aged years in Slavonian oak. Vivino drinkers rate it 4.6 from more than 1,400 ratings.
The nose is all dried fruit and sweet spice: raisin, prune and fig over candied black cherry. Cocoa and a balsamic lift come through from years in Slavonian oak. Vivino drinkers most often reach for oaky chocolate and vanilla notes.
Black cherry
Fig
Plum
Prune
Raisin
Cinnamon
Vanilla
Chocolate
CocoaSweet but not heavy, with around 70 grams per litre of residual sugar from grapes air-dried for months at Negrar. It is soft and broad, the appassimento concentration carrying candied cherry, plum and dark chocolate. Fine acidity and a gentle bitter-almond edge keep it from cloying.
Long and elegant, the cocoa and dried-fig echo of its Slavonian-oak ageing trailing behind a warming, 15 percent finish.
Giuseppe Quintarelli's Recioto is the sweet, rare counterpart to his legendary Amarone, made only in good years and aged for years before release. Drinkers rate it 4.6 out of 5 across more than 1,400 Vivino ratings, and Wine Advocate scored the 2015 96 points; a collector's dessert wine for chocolate and aged cheese.
A rare, sporadically released dessert wine. The listings here cover the 2011 and 2015 vintages in both 375 ml halves and 750 ml bottles.
A special-occasion sweet wine rather than an everyday pour. It rewards dessert tables and cellars far more than a weeknight.
Built to age: years in Slavonian oak plus high sugar and extract let it cellar two decades or more.
A trophy bottle from a cult producer: ideal for a celebration, a gift or the end of a long dinner.
A specialist sweet wine: superb with chocolate, biscuits and blue cheese, but not a partner for savoury mains.
Priced around £140 plus; the rarity and 96-point scores justify it for collectors, though the absolute cost keeps general value moderate.
Scoring is rule-based and deterministic. The model and weightings are documented in our editorial methodology.
A compact view of what the Recioto della Valpolicella denomination actually requires, and how this bottle sits inside it. Pulled from the official Italian disciplinare.
Compare tracked offers from verified retailers at a glance. Stock is shown only where the retailer exposes it. Logos, sale pricing, and the strongest offer are surfaced first.
Two vintages from Quintarelli's cellar: the warm, generous 2011 and the structured 2015 that Monica Larner scored 96 points for Wine Advocate.
A warm, ripe Valpolicella vintage; Monica Larner scored Quintarelli's 2015 Recioto 96 points for Wine Advocate. Around 70 g/L of residual sugar, built to cellar two decades.
A warm, generous Veneto vintage giving a soft, broad Recioto with slightly higher residual sugar than the 2015. Drinking well now and into the late 2030s.
Drink-now / hold guidance reflects general style cues for this wine, not a forecast for a specific bottle. Where vintage-level editorial notes exist, they appear above.
Recioto is the old sweet heart of Valpolicella, made only in good years. Quintarelli dries the grapes on racks and ages the wine for years before release, which is why it is priced as a collectible.
Italian wine law sorts bottles into a pyramid. DOCG sits at the top: tightly drawn boundaries, prescribed grapes, mandatory ageing, government tasting before release. DOC is the same idea with looser thresholds. IGT (Indicazione Geografica Tipica) is broader still, requiring only that 85% of the grapes come from the named territory.
Recioto della Valpolicella is in the DOCG tier. That is not a quality verdict, it is a description of how much freedom the producer has at vinification and ageing.
Recioto della Valpolicella falls within Veneto , covering Verona.
Quintarelli dries the Corvina-led grapes on racks for about four months, so each bottle uses far more fruit than a dry red and loses volume to evaporation.
The wine rests for roughly five to six years in big oak casks at Negrar, tying up cellar space and capital long before any sale.
Recioto is produced sporadically when the harvest allows; the 2011 and 2015 here are rare releases, which pushes prices past £140.
Quintarelli is regarded as a benchmark of Valpolicella, and Wine Advocate's 96 points for the 2015 sustains strong collector demand.
The half-bottle format lowers the entry price to about £146 versus a full 750 ml, making a famous wine a little more reachable.
UK excise duty of about £2.67 on a 750 ml still wine plus 20 percent VAT are fixed costs on top of the trade price, though a minor share of a £140 bottle.
Dishes that complement this wine
The roughly 70 grams per litre of residual sugar and the dried-fruit depth take on dark chocolate, dry almond biscuits and salty blue cheese rather than fighting them.
Recioto's residual sugar sits at a similar level to a dark-chocolate dessert, so neither turns the other bitter or sour. Its own cocoa and dried-fruit depth echoes the plate instead of clashing.
Try with: Chocolate cake · Cheesecake · flourless chocolate torte · More pairings →
The classic Veneto way to drink Recioto: dry almond and hazelnut biscuits dipped into the glass. The wine's marzipan and dried-fig aromas bridge straight to the nutty, lightly sweet pastry.
Try with: Baci di Dama · Baci di Alassio · Tegole · More pairings →
Sweetness is the counterweight to salt and pungency, so a syrupy Recioto calms a salty blue or a long-aged hard cheese the way honey does. The dried-fruit notes act like a fruit preserve on the board.
Try with: Blue cheese · Cheese board · Pecorino sardo e pan carasau · More pairings →
Christmas pudding and other dense, raisin-heavy puddings match the wine's own raisin and candied-fruit weight, so neither feels thin. The shared sweet spice of cinnamon and cocoa does the bridging.
Try with: Christmas Pudding · Bread and Butter Pudding · Trifle · More pairings →
A lighter match than chocolate: Recioto's candied-cherry and orange-peel notes lift a slice of panettone without overpowering it. Best with the plainer, less buttery sweet breads.
Try with: Panettone · Torta della Nonna · Rocciata · More pairings →
Sweetness amplifies chilli burn rather than cooling it, so fiery dishes turn harsh against Recioto. And its oxidative, dried-fruit weight flattens delicate raw fish and oysters.
Skip with: vindaloo · spicy Sichuan stir-fries · sushi · oysters · Pairing guide →
Built for the long haul: the 2015 should drink well into the 2040s, and older Quintarelli Reciotos are still vivid decades on.
Peak around 2032. Best in the years above; holds without falling over either side.
A short splash decant softens the first-pour edge and opens the aromatics.
Built to age: years in Slavonian oak plus high sugar and extract let it cellar two decades or more.
£140.92 is the lowest tracked offer for the current vintage and we have no signal of further discounting.
Read directly from each retailer’s public product page once a day. Last refresh: 7 Jun 2026, 14:16 BST. We do not hold stock and we do not accept payment for placement.
Confidence · HighDrawn from what drinkers consistently report on Vivino and Wine-Searcher, summarised in our own words. A crowd read across many tasters, not a single critic.
Confidence · MediumFrom the official Italian disciplinare for this denomination, cross-checked against the Ministry of Agriculture register.
Confidence · HighOur reading of the price, drawn from the disciplinare, public UK duty rates, and typical landed-cost benchmarks. Not a quote from the producer or a retailer.
Confidence · MediumStyle guidance for this kind of wine at this price point. Treat it as advice, not a forecast for the bottle in your hand.
Confidence · MediumYes. It is a sweet passito red, made from air-dried grapes whose fermentation is stopped to leave residual sugar, around 70 grams per litre in the 2015. It is the sweet counterpart to Quintarelli's dry Amarone.
A Valpolicella field blend led by Corvina with Corvinone and Rondinella, plus a little Croatina and small amounts of other varieties, all dried after harvest in the appassimento method.
The grapes are laid out to dry on racks for about four months, fermented slowly, then aged for years in large Slavonian oak casks at the estate in Negrar before release.
Dark chocolate desserts, dry almond biscuits such as Baci di Dama, and salty or aged cheeses like Gorgonzola. The wine's sweetness balances both cocoa bitterness and cheese salt.
Decades. Its sugar, extract and long oak ageing make it very long-lived; the 2015 should drink well into the 2040s, and older vintages remain vivid.
Quintarelli is a benchmark Valpolicella producer, the wine is made only in good years and in tiny quantities, and it ties up cellar space for years of oak ageing before sale.
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