The Potent King of the Valpolicellas Eric Pfanner/International Herald Tribune The vineyards of Vallpolicella in Italy. NEGRAR, ITALY - Seated at a massive oak table in a dimly lit cellar in this village near Verona, I slurped up a mouthful of wine and looked around for that all-important tool of the taster's trade: the spittoon. Francesco Grigoli, grandson of Giuseppe Quintarelli, in the cellars of the family's winery. There was none in sight, and my host made no move to offer me one. I debated spitting on the floor, as one does in certain French wine regions, but then decided to swallow. That turned out to be the right choice - and not only because the wine was delicious. "My grandfather didn't want anyone to spit his wine," said Francesco Grigoli, referring to Giuseppe Quintarelli, one of the legends of Italian winemaking, who died in January at the age of 84. Tell me when you have had enough, and I will pour it back. It is reassuring to see that Mr. Quintarelli's no-spitting policy has been retained in the winery that bears his name: It bodes well for the continuity of other winemaking practices in the heart of the Valpolicella wine region. The wines of Giuseppe Quintarelli have long drawn cult followers to Valpolicella, which stretches northward from the outskirts of Verona into the foothills of the Dolomite mountain range. They are among the grandest, most iconic, most sought-after red wines of Italy, perhaps the world. Despite their sometimes astronomical prices - Quintarelli's Amarone della Valpolicella often sells for €200, or $264, a bottle, or more - there is also something rooted and humble about these wines and their producers. There is no grand chateau to stamp the presence of the Quintarelli estate on this land, only a fairly ordinary family home with a modest cellar beneath it. The Quintarelli wines, too, are honest fruits of the terroir in a place where many wines are mass produced or artificially confected. Valpolicella is a place of contrasts. Before Mr. Quintarelli took over the family estate in 1950, the region was best known for its light, easy-drinking reds, wines that were sometimes pleasant enough but rarely memorable. Mr. Quintarelli and a handful of other great producers showed that the region was capable of making wines of rare substance, with considerable aging potential. The signature wine of Quintarelli and of the Valpolicella region is Amarone, which is anything but light. Indeed, it is one of the biggest, deepest, richest red wines made anywhere this side of Porto. Amarone is produced through an ancient technique called appassimento, which involves drying the grapes for several months until they look something like raisins, before they are pressed. This concentrates the flavors and the sugars, resulting in wines with startlingly high levels of alcohol - sometimes 16 percent or more - and equally intense, complex flavors. Fresh cherry aromas are complemented by a pleasant bitterness, from which the name of the wine is derived ("amaro" is Italian for bitter). The Romans are said to have used the appassimento technique for a sweet wine that is still made in Valpolicella, called Recioto. This has lower alcohol levels because some of the sugar is left unfermented. According to local lore, Amarone was invented by accident in the early 20th century, when a barrel of Recioto was accidentally left to ferment fully, eliminating the sugar but adding a few degrees of alcohol. Like some other wine country tales, this one has the ring of the apocryphal; indeed, some winemakers here insist that dry appassimento wines like Amarone have been made for much longer. In any case, Amarone is a fairly recent marketing phenomenon. The name was not recognized by the Italian wine authorities until 1968; sales soared in the 1980s and "90s, when consumers around the world were infatuated with the heady, high-alcohol reds of California and other New World wine regions. Big wines need careful handling, otherwise they can seem clumsy or overbearing. Mr. Quintarelli was clearly a perfectionist, with a lot of patience. The Quintarelli Amarone is aged for about eight years in large wood barrels before it is bottled. The wines I tasted in the cellars were mostly from the 2003 vintage, only now being released.