Soave the exotic

Soave the exotic
Magazine: June 2007

Soave is a wonderful name for a wine that represents a highly suggestive land. A land that spans the sweetness of hillside vineyards to the wild nature of the Lessini mountain valleys, where the lace-edged castles of the town of Soave survey the many winegrowers scattered over an area the size of your palm, cradled between the hill and the Verona plain. The fi rst typical wine-producing region of Italy (1936), Soave was considered Italy’s classic white wine until the 1970s and thereafter hailed worldwide as the Veneto region’s most famous wine. It was the era of light wines that didn’t taste of anything much. But today, Soave is something else altogether, the fruit of a true revolution that has spotlighted the vineyard system and the terroir (earth, climate and environment). “Italy’s classic white”, once produced with between 70%- 100% of Garganega (typical white soave grapes) and the rest with Trebbiano di Soave (10%-30%), Soave is now produced mainly using pure Garganega grapes. From a light, almost ethereal wine with a fresh and guileless bouquet, the new Soave Superiore through to the DOCG wines are great white wines, which will evolve over time, also thanks to the fact that they are aged in casks. The best features of the present-day Soave are the price/quality ratio and the fact that it makes an easy accompaniment to any meal, thanks to the different varieties produced.