Soave and the Still White Wines of Veneto

BY IAN D'AGATA | JULY 11, 2019 

Located in Italy’s northeast, Veneto is bordered by Lombardy to the west, Friuli Venezia Giulia to the east, Trentino to the north and Emilia-Romagna to the south. At 18,345 square kilometers, Veneto is only the eighth-largest region of Italy, but it is the country’s biggest wine producer and exporter, boasting 28 DOCs and 14 DOCGs (eight of which share land with bordering regions). Some of these are Italy’s best-known wines, including Prosecco, Soave, Valpolicella and Amarone della Valpolicella. Huge production volumes mean that quality is all over the board, something that is true of all Veneto wines, white or red, more so than with other Italian regions. Furthermore, simply picking wines labeled “Soave” (or “Prosecco” or “Valpolicella,” for that matter) is not enough to ensure vinous bliss, because many Veneto wines carrying important denomination names such as Soave deliver quality ranging from the sublime to the totally forgettable. At the same time, there are little-known Veneto wine denominations that offer delightfully delicious wine, often much better than what is delivered by famous appellations. The little guys deliver some real duds, too, so when it comes to Veneto wine, it’s all about knowing who the producers are, what they are potentially capable of, and what they are actually doing.

Unfortunately, choosing specific producers of high repute won’t always help; for example, many of the big-name estates of Valpolicella limit themselves to bottling a Soave wine, rather than making it on their own, and the quality in those bottles is not the same as bottles made by family-run estates whose livelihood is Soave. In fact, when it comes to Veneto wines, white or red, it is best to get out of your comfort zone: rather than reflexively reaching for a generic Soave or Veneto Pinot Grigio, even one carrying an important winery name on the label, you might want to look at what the better family-run estates are producing. Tracking down their wines isn’t always easy, because many of the more interesting still wines of Veneto are made in little-known denominations and in very small volumes, making them hard to find outside of Italy, but it’s worth the effort.

Views of the Soave vineyards.

The Veneto Numbers Game

According to 2018 data, the surface under vine in Veneto is 94,414 hectares, registering an increase of 8.27% compared to 2017 (4.78% with respect to 2016 and 8.27% compared to 2015). Most consumers associate Veneto with red wines because of the fame of Amarone and the charm of Valpolicella, but in fact it is white wine that has long ruled the region’s wine roost; in recent years, thanks to Prosecco, this has come to mean sparkling white wine in particular. For example, according to data from ISTAT (Italian National institute of Statistics), in 2005 Veneto produced 3.9 million hectoliters of white wine and 2.9 million hectoliters of red wine, most of it (4.025 million hectoliters) of IGT quality. By 2017, those numbers had changed considerably, with 6.6 million hectoliters and 1.8 million hectoliters of white and red wine, respectively, of which a whopping 6.2 million hectoliters was DOC wine. This trend toward much larger white wine production volumes began with the 2010 vintage, when Prosecco’s popularity started going through the roof. In fact, the most recent data shows that four of the five biggest Veneto wine denominations are devoted mostly to white grapes. In order, these are: generic Prosecco (Glera; 4,696,000 quintals of grapes, a 37.4% increase compared to 2017); Pinot Grigio Delle Venezie (Pinot Grigio: over 1.7 million quintals, or a 28.9% jump with respect to 2017); Conegliano-Valdobbiadene (Glera again: 1.278 million quintals or a 31.0% increase); and Soave (591,000 quintals or a decrease of 12.8%). Of those Veneto production areas associated mostly with red wine, only Valpolicella cracks the top five. Much the same is true when looking at bottle figures. Veneto’s top three DOCG wines in terms of bottled volumes are (in decreasing order): Conegliano-Valdobbiadene (the best of all Proseccos, a DOCG wine), Amarone, and Asolo (which is the lesser-known and much smaller of the two Prosecco DOCGs). Again, two of the three top spots belong to white wine production. The song remains the same when DOC bottled volumes are analyzed: the top three places are occupied by Prosecco, Soave and Valpolicella Ripasso.

Veneto wine exports show the same trends as the region’s wine production. The most recent data from ISTAT, published in 2019 but reflecting 2018 figures, shows that no other Italian region exports more wine than Veneto (and exports are up 4%); again, it’s white wines, and Prosecco in particular, that are mostly responsible for this increase. The increase in DOC wine exports is paired with a fall in IGT wine exports (as borne out, for example, in a comparison of the 2016 and 2017 vintages: 6.2 million hectoliters of DOC wines and 1.9 million hectoliters of IGT wines in 2017 versus 5.7 million hectoliters and 3.5 million hectoliters in 2016), which, at first glance, ought to be a good thing. The problem is that, as mentioned above, not all of Veneto’s DOC white wines are worthy of the supposedly prestigious DOC category on the label. As the committees that grant DOC/DOCG certifications prefer to let sleeping dogs lie and often attribute DOC/DOCG “right of way” with considerable largesse (to put it charitably), wine lovers need to be aware that the quality in the bottle, though never horrible or downright flawed, often leaves a lot to be desired.