Amarone.

Fifteen minutes by bus and we were out of Soave’s white-wine heaven and into the richest of reds at Villa Canestrari. Amarone. Where to start? Amarone is red wine made with dried grapes. There’s a bitterness, or at least a nuttiness, implied in the word amarone, but the wines are commonly awash with ripe, warm, heady fruit. These wines give hedonism a good name.

What makes this area so magnetic is the fact that Verona and the wider Veneto offer the kind of characterful young whites and reds that can be consumed anywhere and anytime, but also excels at more heavy-hitting reds.