Corvinone is a red

Italian wine Italian wine () is produced in every region of Italy. Italy is the country with the widest variety of indigenous grapevine in the world, with an area of under vineyard cultivation, as well as the List of wine-producing regions#Countries, world's ...

grape A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus ''Vitis''. Grapes are a non- climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters. The cultivation of grapes began approximately 8,0 ...

variety native to the

Veneto Veneto, officially the Region of Veneto, is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the Northeast Italy, north-east of the country. It is the fourth most populous region in Italy, with a population of 4,851,851 as of 2025. Venice is t ...

region of northern

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

. In 2010 a total grape growing area of was planted worldwide, with all of it in Italy save for in

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. Seldom found in

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

alone, Corvinone is blended, along with Rondinella, Molinara and other autochthonous varieties, in

Corvina Corvina is an Italian wine grape variety that is sometimes also referred to as Corvina Veronese or Cruina. The total global wine-growing area in 2010 was , all of which is grown in the Veneto region of northeast Italy, except for planted in Ar ...

-dominant red wines of the

Valpolicella Valpolicella (, , ) is a viticultural zone of the province of Verona, Italy (wine), Italy, east of Lake Garda. The hilly agricultural and marble-quarrying region of small holdings north of the Adige is famous for wine production. Valpolicella ra ...

and Bardolino regions of

. Corvinone is similar enough to the more widespread Corvina variety that it has historically often been mistaken as a clone; indeed its name in

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

suggests a meaning of "large corvina". More recent ampelographical work and

DNA profiling DNA profiling (also called DNA fingerprinting and genetic fingerprinting) is the process of determining an individual's deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) characteristics. DNA analysis intended to identify a species, rather than an individual, is cal ...

has shown it to be a separate variety, however.

Viticulture and winemaking

Corvinone produces winged pyramidal bunches, larger and more loosely packed than Corvina, and ripening later (mid-October). Individual grapes of Corvinone are larger too, making the variety suitable for drying, part of the winemaking process for several Valpolicella wine styles, most notably

Amarone Amarone della Valpolicella, usually known as Amarone (, ), is an Italian DOCG denomination of typically rich dry red wine made from the partially dried grapes of the Corvina (45–95%, of which up to 50% could be substituted with Corvinone), R ...

and Recioto. Since the 1990s, Corvinone has become more important in the blending of these red wines. Most sources say the blend is Corvina, Rondinella and Molinara, often omitting Corvinone because it was not always recognised as a separate variety. It has become more popular with winemakers than Molinara due to its denser colour and superior flavours. As a result, its growing area in

between 2000 and 2010 increased more than ten-fold from just to , whilst in the same period that of Molinara dropped from to .

References

{{wines Wine grapes of Italy Wine grapes of Veneto Red wine grape varieties