The landscape of Soave Valley, photo by Alessandro Pighi via ilsoave.com
Once one of Italy’s most famous white wines, Soave has had its ups and downs, and can now be a little tough to find. Fortunately, there are some great Soave out there if you’re willing to look. Mostly made from the Garganega grape, Soave dedicates 20,000 vines to this once popular wine.
This week’s episode we discuss:
- Where is Soave?
- Why is Soave the perfect place to grow Garganega?
- Soave’s bad reputation and what they are doing to overcome it
- Wine styles, flavor characteristics, and food pairings
Check out an ad for Soave from 1979 here
Wine Recommendations:
Wine recommendations: on the left Folonari Soave DOC 2011 and Pieropan Soave Classico 2015 on the right.
Folonari Soave DOC 2011 – priced around $10. This wine has aromas of honey, beeswax, minerals and dried herbs. It has medium acidity and lighter than medium body, with flavors of orange, dried herbs, honey, flowers, and bit of salinity. We enjoyed this wine more as it warmed up from refrigerator temperature, so serve it cool, not cold.
Pieropan Soave Classico 2015 – priced around $14-$20. It’s a fruity wine and we really liked the texture – medium body but with some “oomph”. Also, we thought this wine had some finesse to it with aromas of gooseberry, vanilla, radicchio and tropical fruit. This is probably too acidic for most people to have without food, with strong acidity and flavors of tropical fruit and white grapefruit.
Have we peaked your interested for Soave? Or where you already a smooth operator? Let us know your thoughts and recommendations below or on social media. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time!
Sources:
- Wine Folly
- Wikipedia
- Soave the go to Wine
- Wine Searcher article 1
- Wine Searcher article 2
- i-winereview
- Soave’s White Wizard
- The Wine Bible
- Oxford Guide to Wine