Our Wine Choice: Inama Soave Classico Foscarino I Palchi Grande Cuvée 2020

Our Wine Choice this week is a serious rendition of Soave and comes from a new project from the forward-looking Inama winery in Italy’s northern Veneto region.

The Inama Soave Classico Foscarino I Palchi Grande Cuvée 2020 is made from a selection of the best grapes planted on the Monte Foscarino slope within Soave Classico. “I Palchi” refers to the series of wide terraces on which old garganega vines, with an average age of 50 years, are trained in traditional Veronese pergolas.

2020 is the second vintage of I Palchi. Despite a challenging season in the region – a dry winter and spring, followed by alternating heatwaves and rainfall – careful selection of grapes resulted in a wine that is beautifully complex in aroma and flavor profile, ranging from white and yellow fruit to herbs and flowers.

“The idea was to obtain the maximal purity, so we identified the best micro-parcels of the old pergola vineyards,” Alessio Inama, who with his two brothers is part of the third generation of family ownership of the winery, told me during a Zoom tasting.

I particularly like the distinct salty, ashy minerality of the wine, reminiscent of the basalt lava soils of the ancient volcano of Foscarino. The wines from Foscarino go beyond many of the zesty, crisp and often simple wines made from garganega.

There’s fantastic textural complexity, too, from eight hours of skin maceration before the free-run juice is fermented and maturated in a mixture of barriques, large casks and stainless steel, with periodic lees stirring.

“We were looking for perfect balance in the vines, and areas with superior aromatic expression, both in terms of complexity and intensity,” Inama told me.

Complex it is, and it’s also delightful to drink now but has the intensity and structure to gracefully age in the cellar, too.

– Claire Nesbitt, Associate Editor