Corte Mainente, Soave, Italy

We have chosen a winner to work with in Soave with 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 (Jancis Robinson described his 2017 Cengelle on jancisrobinson.com as "Chock-full of fine fruit. Racy and so refreshing and charming!"). Thanks to his wish to build his sales in this country with us, they remain extremely good value. Soave, from 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 vines that the end result became mean and watery, albeit cheap. But true Soave, from top growers such Pieropan and Inama is such a delight - and Davide at Corte Mainente is challenging these luminaries.