Australian Corvina wine regional and flavour profile

RED | LIGHT BODY | MEDIUM BODY

Corvina tastes and aromas

Smokey, red cherry, raspberries, floral scents of geranium, spices, hints of prune and fig. The finish is sometimes marked with sour cherry notes.

Corvina mouthfeel

Light to medium bodied, with low tannins and high acidity

Facts about Corvina

• Corvina is an Italian wine grape variety that is sometimes also referred to as Corvina Veronese, Cruina, or in Europe, Cassabria.
• Despite its powerful flavours, Corvina is capable of extreme complexity. Corvina is one of the main grapes used to produce Amarone, a popular wine produced by the ancient Roman method of appassimento – drying grapes on straw mats in the sun before ferment, which concentrates all elements including sugars and flavours. The shrivelled grapes produce intense prune and fig flavours alongside its usual fruit notes
• Growing Corvina has been a centuries-old headache for many winemakers. To ripen properly, the buds require lots of space, leading to some very inventive and often very unusual-looking long canes in many an Italian vineyard.
• The earliest written record of Corvina is in 1627, when it was quoted in Alessandro Peccana’s curiously titled paper, Problems of Cold Drinks.

Australian regions that produce Corvina

Plantings of Corvina and Rondinella (grapes used to create Amarone) can be found in the Hilltops region of NSW. The Hilltops climate is not dissimilar to northern Italy’s, with warm summers tempered by cool, mountain breezes.

The main producer, Freeman Vineyards, uses different winemaking processes from the traditional Italian practice, in that only a proportion of grapes is dried – in a neighbour’s solar-powered prune dehydrator – and then blended with non-dried fruit (all traditional Italian varietals) before being aged in old oak.

Outside of Australia, Corvina’s home is the Veneto in northeast Italy. Here it’s used (usually blended, but sometimes solo) to produce the iconic wines of Bardolino and Valpolicella. Records show that Corvina has grown in this area for many centuries.

What food to pair with Corvina

Corvina wines pair well with a number of Italian dishes, particularly those that contain pasta and tomato based sauces. Although it is a red wine, it often pairs well with seafood dishes due to its light acidity, unusual given the general rule of thumb that red wine pairs with red meats, and white with fish, seafood and poultry.

When produced into Amarone wines, good foods that match the Amarone’s light acidity and flavour are creamy risottos, which allow the acidity to cut through the creaminess and compliment the dishes flavours.