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By Root 272 0

Outside of the Graves appellation there are a few whites worth seeking out, including those of the famed Châteaux Margaux and Lynch-Bages. Although not a great red-wine vintage, 2004 was a significantly better year for white Graves, and the 2005s should be at least as good. Either of these vintages will drink well over the next few years in conjunction with white fish, grilled chicken, or sheep’s milk and goat’s milk cheese. The Big Three usually taste delicious in youth and then go into hibernation for several years. If you should be lucky enough to find an older vintage, like an ′89 Chevalier or a ′94 Haut-Brion, treat it with all due respect—get some turbot or Dover sole and share it with someone whose gratitude you’d like to cultivate.

NO RESPECT

Soave

The view from the exit ramp of the autostrada is emblematic of the problem with Soave. The first thing you see through your windshield is a huge lime-green warehouse with a batwing roofline that looks like some kind of retro-futuristic vision from the animators of the Powerpuff Girls. Off in the hazy distance, floating dreamlike above the big SOAVE BOLLA sign atop the warehouse, you can see the medieval ramparts of Soave castle perched on a distant hilltop. From the ridiculous to the sublime…

They ought to post a CAVEAT EMPTOR sign beside the exit.

Soave is the “the most maligned, misunderstood and polarized wine district in Italy,” according to Italophiles Joe Bastianich and David Lynch, authors of the indispensible Vino Italiano. Most of us think of Soave as the insipid white beverage of our ignorant youth. But there are a handful of stubborn idealists who produce exceptional wines from the native Garganega grapes in the rolling hills just east of Verona.

It says a lot about the current situation in Soave that one of the two finest producers has recently divorced himself from the appellation, removing the Soave name from his labels. “It’s water,” he says of the average Soave. “No aroma, no taste.” Roberto Anselmi is a Porsche-driving, black-Prada-clad native of the region whose genial and gregarious nature keeps rubbing up against his fierce perfectionism. Shortly after he welcomes me into his sleek modernist suite of offices in the village of Monteforte, he throws a small tantrum about the faint ammoniac residue of some cleaning products in the tasting room and instructs his daughter to move our tasting to the nearby winery, while making a note to chastise the cleaning staff. In many ways he reminds me of Angelo Gaja, another hypomanic Italian who inherited a wine estate in a backwater appellation and decided to conquer the world.

Anselmi’s father was a successful negotiant who turned out millions of bottles of undistinguished plonk from purchased grapes. After returning to the family seat with an oenology degree and high moral purpose, Roberto closed down the negotiant business and set about, in concert with his friend and neighbor Leonildo Pieropan, “to make a revolution.”

The revolution started, as is so often the case, in the hills. Or maybe it was a counterrevolution: the traditional Soave Classico district encompassed only the hillsides, with their poor volcanic and calcareous soils. In 1968, when the official Soave DOC was created by the Italian authorities, pressure from the big growers resulted in a huge expansion of the zone to include vast swatches of fertile, overproductive flatland. (Ignoring the ancient Roman maxim: Bacchus loves the hills.) Anselmi concentrated his efforts on the steep hillsides and adapted new viticultural practices to replace the old super-productive pergola system. Beginning in the late seventies he started producing serious, rich Soaves and lobbied fiercely for stricter regulations.

Anselmi failed to convince the authorities to hold his neighbors to a higher standard. “After twenty-five years I decided to divorce Soave,” he says. So you will just have to take my word for it that Anselmi’s wines are essentially Soaves—the essence of what garganega (accented with a little aromatic Trebbiano di Soave) from this region