Inama I Palchi Soave Classico 2022
£40.75
The wine
Elegance is the defining characteristic here. I Palchi captures the volcanic soil of this ancient grape-growing region with mineral notes, stone fruit and flinty hints, while Garganega adds floral complexity: white flowers, chamomile and citrus.
I Palchi is a local word for a run of wide terraces, lined with pergolas of old Garganega, high on Monte Foscarino. Their exposure and the attention they get in the vineyard produced fruit good enough that from 2019 Inama began bottling it separately under a new label. Fermentation is split half in large barrels, thirty per cent in barriques and twenty in steel, and the blend then rests six months in bottle before release.
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.
