Held back for a few more years of bottle age (with only 1,648 heavy bottles and large formats available), the De Stefani 2017 Colli di Conegliano Refrontolo Stèfen 1624 is made with the native Marzemino grape. Now that the wine has evolved in the bottle, there are dried fruit aromas and lots of heavy spice. I also get a big dose of baking chocolate with allspice and cinnamon. This is an extremely large and full-bodied red wine.

The De Stefani 2016 Colli di Conegliano Refrontolo Stèfen 1624 is another super intense wine from this producer (also packaged, unfortunately, in an heavy bottle). What you get here in abundance is inky concentration, black fruit flavors, bright acidity and plenty of natural spice that comes directly from the Marzemino grape. With a small production of approximately 3,200 bottles, this full-bodied wine is poised to age past the 10-year mark and may be best paired with beef marinated in teriyaki sauce. You need some succulence to counter the tannins.

Lightly sweet and juicy sun-dried cherry, date and licorice flavors are layered with complementary savory notes of game, graphite, and dried herb in this distinctive red. Reminiscent of an Amarone, but without the weight. Fresh and medium-bodied, with dusty tannins firming the finish. Drink now through 2023. 600 cases made.??–AN??Region: Italy / Colli di Conegliano Select to Add

Here is another little-known grape that makes up the greater genetic patrimony of Northeast Italy. A pure expression of the Marzemino grape, the 2013 Colli di Conegliano Refrontolo Stèfen 1624 sees up to 70 days of appassimento to concentrate the flavors, sugars and alcohol of the wine. Only 2,665 bottles were made. This is an inky dark red wine that coats the glass with its consistent substance and does the same on the palate. The bouquet offers tones of black fruit, bitter baking chocolate, tobacco and mesquite smoke. The grapes are fermented on the skins before going into barrique for two years and then in botte for an additional 12 months. Stèfan is the ancient surname of the De Stefani family, and the Marzemino grape has been cultivated in the Refrontolo area for seven centuries. It was said to be Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's favorite wine, and in his opera Don Giovanni he wrote: "Versa il vino! Eccellente Marzimino!"

The biggest of the bunch is the 2012 Colli di Conegliano Refrontolo Stèfen 1624. Made with air-dried Marzemino grapes, this is a powerful and thickly extracted wine. It offers 15.5% alcohol and you definitely feel that power. The wine opens to a deep black color and a level of consistency so thick that the wine is visibly slower in its movements as it coats the inside of your glass. The bouquet opens to dried fruit aromas with prune and blackberry. There is savory spice, moist chewing tobacco, bitter chocolate, tar and licorice. There is some soft residual sugar buried within all that thickness. The name Stèfen is an archaic name for the De Stefani family.