Inama
Soave spent decades as the cheap white in a straw-covered bottle. Inama is one of the houses that refused to accept that — bottling old-vine Garganega off volcanic hills as a serious, ageworthy white. Here's the house style, which cru to chase, and how to taste on the Soave slopes most tourists drive straight past.
Say "Soave" to most wine drinkers and they picture the wrong thing: a thin, forgettable white in a straw-covered flask, poured cheap and forgotten faster. That reputation was earned, honestly, by an ocean of industrial wine off the flat plain. Inama is one of the houses that spent a career proving it was a slander against the real place.
The estate sits in the Soave Classico heartland east of Verona, in the Veneto, on the volcanic hills where Soave was always meant to come from. Its whole argument is a single idea: that Soave, grown from old-vine Garganega on dark volcanic slopes with the yields kept honest, is not a cheap wine at all — it's a textured, mineral, ageworthy white that has been badly underrated for decades. Taste one and the case makes itself.
The hill does the work
Everything at Inama starts with the Foscarino hill, a dome of ancient volcanic soil in the Classico zone. Old Garganega vines here, cropped low, give something the plain never could: weight without heaviness, a saline stony cut under the almond and ripe-pear fruit, and — crucially — the structure to improve in bottle for years rather than fade in months.
That last point is the quiet radical one. Soave was sold as a wine to drink young and think about never. Inama put single-vineyard bottlings on the table and asked you to cellar them.
The best Soave doesn't taste like a bargain. It tastes like a volcano, and it rewards patience the way a good white Burgundy does.
The house works the vineyard hard — lower yields, careful site selection, a mix of steel and judicious oak depending on the wine — but the philosophy is restraint. The volcanic soil is the flavour; the winemaking is there to get out of its way.
The wines
Start with the Inama Soave Classico — the benchmark bottling, the honest introduction, almond and white flower and that saline lift, a wine that quietly outperforms its reputation and its shelf neighbours. It's the everyday way into the house.
Step up to Vigneti di Foscarino, drawn from those old vines on the volcanic hill — richer, deeper, more textured, the truest picture of what the estate is about. And the icon is Vigneto du Lot, the single-vineyard flagship: a Soave with the concentration and length to age, and the wine to hand anyone who still thinks the appellation is a joke.
There's a second act, too, one many people miss. In the nearby Colli Berici hills Inama makes serious reds from Carménère and Cabernet — the flagship a structured Bordeaux-style bottling called Bradisismo. If you know the house only for its whites, the reds are a genuine surprise worth seeking out.
The setting
The Soave Classico slopes are one of the Veneto's quiet pleasures — gentle volcanic hills, the medieval castle of Soave town crowning the view, and almost none of the crowds that clog Valpolicella a short drive north. That emptiness is the gift. You get benchmark vineyards and a proper cellar visit without queuing behind a coach party, in a corner of the wine world that tourism has largely overlooked.
Visiting
Inama receives visitors by appointment rather than as a walk-in, with tastings across the range and a look at the volcanic vineyards that make the wines make sense. It's an easy detour off the Verona–Vicenza road and an underused one — pair it with a wander up to Soave's castle and you've got a half-day almost no other visitor to the region bothers with.
Book ahead, especially in the warmer months, and confirm the current format on inamaaziendaagricola.it before you build a day around it.
What to buy
Match the bottle to the moment. For an easy, revelatory first taste, the Soave Classico does the job and rewrites your expectations for the price. Want the heart of the house? Reach for Vigneti di Foscarino and its old-vine depth. And if you want to prove — to yourself or a doubter — that Soave can be a great white worth cellaring, Vigneto du Lot is the bottle that closes the argument.
Common questions
Taking Soave seriously when the world had written it off. For most of the late 20th century Soave was a byword for thin, industrial white wine sold cheap. Inama is one of the estates that rebuilt the appellation's reputation from old-vine Garganega grown on the volcanic Foscarino hill in the Classico heartland — bottling single vineyards, cutting yields, and proving the wine could be textured, mineral and worth ageing. The Vigneto du Lot bottling is the calling card.
Garganega, chiefly — a late-ripening native white that, grown well on the right volcanic soils, gives a wine of almond, ripe pear, white flowers and a distinctive saline, stony cut. The rules allow a portion of Trebbiano di Soave (a different, better grape than ordinary Trebbiano) or Chardonnay, but the great Soaves, Inama's included, lean hard on old-vine Garganega. That's where the texture and the ageing potential come from.
Yes — the estate receives visitors by appointment rather than as a walk-in cellar door, with tastings across the range and, typically, a look at the volcanic vineyards on the Soave hills. It's an easy detour off the Verona–Vicenza axis and a rewarding one, because the Soave Classico slopes are quietly beautiful and almost entirely skipped by the tourist crowds heading to Valpolicella. Book ahead and confirm the current format on inamaaziendaagricola.it.
No. The estate built its name on Soave, but it also farms in the nearby Colli Berici, where it makes serious reds from Carménère and Cabernet — the flagship there is a Bordeaux-style bottling called Bradisismo. So the house is really two stories: benchmark volcanic whites from Soave and structured reds from the Berici hills. If you know Inama for one, it's worth trying the other.
Glossary
- Garganega
- The native white grape behind Soave — late-ripening, naturally productive, and only truly expressive when yields are cut and it's grown on the right hills. Old-vine Garganega on volcanic soil is the source of every serious Soave, Inama's included.
- Soave Classico
- The historic volcanic-hill heartland of the Soave zone, east of Verona, distinct from the flatter, larger plain that carries the basic Soave name. The Classico slopes — Foscarino, Carbonare and others — are where the ageworthy wines come from.
- Pergola
- The traditional overhead training system once common in Soave, which spreads the vine's canopy on a high frame. Quality-minded growers have often shifted toward lower-yielding methods on the best hillside sites to concentrate the fruit.