Corte Mainente "Veronese" Bianco Secco, Veneto, Italy 2023

FROM FRANCE & WESTERN:

THE WINE: 100% Garganega on Calcareous soil.

THE PRODUCER: With less than ten hectares of vines, Mainente’s wines are largely unknown outside the region, but with the recent addition of Ugo’s two sons to the Corte family, this is all about to change. Their last vintage have received top marks, and in 2019 Forbes named their Soave one of the “Best Italian Wines of the Year”. Work in the cellar is clean and no-frills with the Mainente brothers preferring concrete over inox, but experimenting with larger casks for certain cuvées. For our opening order, they agreed to let us pick our favorite Soave vineyard from their holdings, and create a bottling exclusive for the US. We chose to declassify it to “Bianco Veronese IGT” to highlight the larger Verona region, over the Byzantine Soave and her 33 crus. Mainente’s Garganega and Trebbiano di Soave vines are planted on steep terrasses overlooking the town and with 60-80 years of vine age, the flavors they coax from the patchwork of terroir of clay, black volcanic fossils and pue, white limestone conjure up a “Steelier” Bourgogne Blanc, but with the flavors of white melon, orange zest and bitter almond, so prized in the whites of the misty Po Valley.