Here’s the full tasting note for...

Corte Mainente, Soave, Vigna Cengelle, 2023

"Please do not tell me that this wine is £12.75. It cannot be. This is so good! When I first tasted it, I assumed it was around the £25 mark. It is every inch a Soave and it has all those things that you want from a wine on your table: clarity, fruit that sings like a robin on a dew-wet sunlit morning, a finger-smudge of sweet herbs, a trill of acidity. It's young, so you can taste candied angelica and rhubarb compote. It's full of promise and has so much more to give, so you can taste thyme and sage, honey and crab apples. It's as bright as a new, convex mirror and just a little pearly in texture. GV, 16.5/20, 2024-2028", Tamlyn Currin, jancisrobinson.com, 21st December 2024

From 90% Garganega (with 10% Trebbiano di Soave) on calcareous soils near the cellar, Cengelle is brilliant this vintage: a hot, dry summer and a couple of days of skin contact have lent it extra concentration and texture. With a glint of green in the glass,  and a burst of ripe citrus perfume, it’s limpidly fresh, redolent of greengages and lime. Floral and exuberantly fruity, this offers a ripe and friendly glass, lovely to drink on its own or with a wide range of light dishes. Now-2026

In 2019 we found a winner to work with in Soave in the shape of young Davide Mainente. His family own 12 hectares of vines, both near the town (the Cengelle vineyard) and in the Classico hillside sites such as Pigno and Tenda. His wines are winning rave reviews in Italy and here from the UK press and our customers alike. Thanks to his wish to build his sales in this country with us, they remain extremely good value.

Soave, based on the Garganega grape grown in vineyards east of Verona, 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.