Here’s the full tasting note for...

Corte Mainente, Netrroir, Soave, 2020

Because Nettroir is made from a selection of Davide’s best grapes across all his sites, it’s only a Soave rather than a Soave Classico. From grapes picked late for full maturity - note the higher alcohol - it’s left on its fine lees for a year to develop complexity and half is aged in old barrels. Very ripe and concentrated, with impressive intensity of plum, ripe melon and citrus flavours just tinged with subtle oak. Vibrant, powerful and exotic. Now-2025

Soave, based on the Garganega grape grown in vineyards east ofVerona, is hugely under-rated here. It's one of those wines (like Muscadet) that the supermarket buyers murdered twenty years ago, pushing the co-ops to produce so much volume from the pergola-trained (and irrigated) vines that the end result became mean and watery, albeit cheap. But true Soave, from top growers such Pieropan, Anselmi and Inama is such a delight - and Davide at Corte Mainente is challenging these luminaries.