Inama Carbonare Soave Classico 2024
£23.25
The wine
Richly flavoured, with an important acidic backbone to provide balance and support the aromatic character. Citrus flavours are complemented by savoury notes that add complexity, and the finish is fresh.
Carbonare is a vineyard of old pergolas in a remote fold of the hills, facing east halfway up a steep-sided valley and catching the morning sun. The name comes from the charcoal farmers used to burn here. Its microclimate is quite different from Foscarino, cooled by air coming down from the Val d’Alpone, and the basalt underfoot shifts from black through green to red and orange. A short maceration on skins, then fermentation and twelve months in stainless steel, with six months more in bottle.
The producer
Inama
View all Inama winesInama farm on two quite different pieces of ground in the Veneto: the basaltic volcanic hills of Soave Classico for their whites, and the calcareous Colli Berici to the south for their reds. The contrast between the two is the whole point of the estate.
Giuseppe Inama, known as Bepi, came from the Val di Non in Trentino, took a degree in oenology at San Michele all’Adige and worked as a cellar master in the Soave area. Through a lifetime of saving he bought the first Foscarino vineyards in 1964. His son Stefano began making Sauvignon alongside him in 1991, then reinterpreted Soave and started the estate reds in the Colli Berici. Stefano now works with his three sons, Matteo, Alessio and Luca, who between them cover the farming, the cellar and the markets.
The whites are all Garganega, a variety the Romans brought to the Classico zone two thousand years ago, and the house style leans on minerality and field-flower aromatics rather than fruit. Vin Soave is half of everything they make. Above it sit the single sites: Carbonare on old pergolas facing east, Foscarino from old vines on the mountain that gave the family its start, and I Palchi from the terraces above them, bottled separately only since 2019.
The reds are the more unusual half of the estate. Inama were the first to take Carmenère seriously in the Colli Berici and pushed for the DOC that now recognises it, a variety mistaken for Merlot across northern Italy for a century until DNA work sorted it out in the 1990s. The estate farms every plot to reserve standard and decides each season which parcels are promoted.
