Jesús Barquín: Expressive spicy nose, with fresh-fruit notes of orange and strawberries; smoky and peppery notes, too. Slightly aggressive tannins eventually melt—though only partially. Fresh finish with notes of smoked meat. 15.5

Nicolas Belfrage: Wild fruit and herbs on nose. Palate is bitter, quinine-like and off-balance. Little joy, don’t see it coming round. But a challenge. 14

Andrew Jefford: Saturated dense black-red. Very meaty, earthy, undergrowthy, feral; this is sticking your nose into someone’s not-very-recently washed hair and inhaling deeply. But since the hair grew in the Veronese hills, I love it. This is a disconcerting but very exciting aroma. Now to the palate. Hey, we are into the big school! This is another sensationally concentrated wine: massive textures, depth, and power. It’s amazing that Amarone can cover such a wide variety of levels of ambition as this tasting has revealed. I rate this wine very highly indeed: This is a very tightly sewn palate of pristine focus and definition, with wonderful dry-ripe cherry and plum lurking at the back, but covered and modulated and massaged into secondary complexities that demand time to reveal and decode. The point here is that the fresh fruit has not altogether been lost and dislimned; all of the secondary complexities spring from that. Magnificent wine. 18.5