Ca’ Rugate San Michele Soave Classico 2024
£13.45
The wine
Elegant floral aromas combine with notes of fruit and a touch of peppery spice. Crisp and zesty on the palate, this elegant Soave Classico shows notes of sweet almond on the finish.
Soave Classico is the original heartland of the appellation, the volcanic hills around Soave and Monteforte, and it is a different wine from the flat valley floor that carries the plain Soave name. Garganega is the grape, late-ripening and naturally high in acidity, and San Michele is Ca' Rugate's benchmark bottling: unoaked, precise and considerably more interesting than Soave's reputation allows.
The producer
Ca’ Rugate
View all Ca’ Rugate winesThe Tessari family have handed this business down since the early 1900s, renaming it Ca' Rugate in 1986 after the volcanic hills where the vineyards sit. Michele, of the fourth generation, has brought considerable energy: a technologically advanced new cellar, and expansion into Valpolicella with vineyards in the hills of Montecchia di Crosara. The estate now runs to 90 hectares.
The volcanic soil is the thread running through everything. Soave sits on the remains of ancient eruptions, and the black basalt beneath the Classico zone gives Garganega a mineral, smoky character that the sandier valley floor cannot match. Garganega is a much-maligned grape, largely because Soave was made in enormous quantity and indifferent quality through the second half of the twentieth century, and estates like this one have spent decades repairing the damage.
In Valpolicella the family work the full range of styles, from fresh red through Ripasso to Amarone, and the two sweet Recioto wines are made in the manner both appellations used long before their dry versions existed. Ca' Rugate has taken Gambero Rosso's Tre Bicchieri many times over.
