Inama Carmenère Più Veneto Rosso 2024
£16.95
The wine
Vivid ruby with a narrow purple rim. An elegant nose of small dark berries, cocoa and black pepper. The palate is balanced and fresh, fruity and spicy, with integrated tannins and length.
Inama were the first estate to take Carmenère seriously in the Colli Berici, and they pushed for the DOC that now recognises it. The grape was mistaken for Merlot across northern Italy for a century and only correctly identified by DNA work in the 1990s. Più is the entry point to their reds, eighty-five per cent Carmenère with Merlot, grown on calcareous ground and given twelve months in used barriques. Every plot is farmed to reserve standard, with the decision on which becomes reserve taken each season.
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.
