There is a certain kind of heat in Lena di Mezzo that you don’t forget. Not the harsh summer heat — but the warm, golden, alive Italian sunlight that wraps itself around you like an embrace. When I join the harvest here, in the heart of Verona province, it always feels like stepping into a tradition that’s older than all of us. The name “Lena di Mezzo” means “the passage between two hills”. A narrow opening carved by nature itself, a gateway where only the southern sun enters, pouring directly onto the slopes as if it were blessing the vines one by one. You feel that warmth on your skin as you pick. The grapes are warm too — almost pulsing — their skins radiating the sun they’ve been collecting all season. Here, nothing is done in a hurry. The grapes for Amarone della Valpolicella are still picked by hand, chosen not just by ripeness, but by instinct, by eye, by touch. You lift a cluster and you know: yes… this one has lived enough sun, enough heat, enough time. Every berry carries a whisper of the valley: the warmth of the southern light, the dry wind between the hills, the sweetness slowly concentrating inside. And as you gather them, you already taste in your mind the wine they will become — dense, deep, warm, almost velvety. A wine with backbone and soul. A wine that remembers every hour of sunshine it received. Harvesting in Lena di Mezzo is not just work. It’s a conversation with the land. A slow dance with the sun. A promise that what we pick today will become something extraordinary tomorrow. Amarone is not made. Amarone is lived — in every hot afternoon, every handpicked cluster, every breath of the valley.