Soave is a dry white wine from the hills east of Verona, made mainly from the Garganega grape, sometimes with a little Trebbiano di Soave or Chardonnay. At its best it's textured and mineral, scented with almond, white flower and yellow apple, with a saline snap that surprises people expecting something soft. The name attached to a lot of thin, industrial wine in the past, but hillside Soave from the Classico zone is a genuinely serious white.

Why did Soave get a bad reputation?

In the 1960s and 70s Soave became one of the world's best-selling Italian whites, and demand was met by flooding the market with high-yield fruit from the flat land — thin, neutral wine sold in the famous straw-wrapped flask. The name sold; the quality slid. A core of hillside growers kept making the real thing, and over the last few decades they've rebuilt Soave's reputation from the Classico heartland up. The lesson: the word on the label matters less than where the grapes grew.

What's the difference between Soave and Soave Classico?

Classico marks fruit from the original hills around the towns of Soave and Monteforte d'Alpone — the volcanic and limestone slopes that give the wine its tension and length. Plain Soave DOC can come from the flatter, more fertile land added later. There's also Soave Superiore DOCG for riper, longer-aged wines, and the sweet Recioto di Soave. As a rule, reach for Classico: it's where the good hillside sites are.

Does Soave age, and what do you eat with it?

Good Soave ages far better than its easy-drinking image suggests — the best single-vineyard bottles gain honey, nut and a waxy depth over five to ten years. Young, it's a brilliant table white: serve it with risotto, freshwater fish, chicken, or the local Monte Veronese cheese. Garganega's almond note loves anything with nuts or brown butter. Don't over-chill it, or you'll mute the very texture that makes it special.

Soave & Garganega

The last pour of Part 4 was a sweet white off the volcanic hills east of Verona — dried Garganega, Recioto di Soave, Veneto's first DOCG. Work those same hills for a dry wine and you get one of the most misunderstood whites in Italy: a wine whose name once meant "cheap plonk in a straw flask," and which a stubborn band of growers has hauled back to real seriousness. This is Soave, and its comeback is one of the best stories in Italian wine.

The fall

Let's deal with the reputation first, because it's the whole drama. In the 1960s and 70s Soave became a global smash — one of the best-selling Italian whites anywhere, the safe white-wine order in a thousand trattorie abroad. To meet the demand, growers planted the fertile flatland and cropped it hard, and the wine that flowed out in the famous straw-wrapped fiasco was pale, thin and forgettable. The name sold millions of bottles and lost its soul in the process.

If your only memory of Soave is a watery glass from decades ago, that's why. But it was never the whole picture.

The rise

Up in the hills, a core of families never stopped making the real thing. The turning point has a name: Pieropan, in the town of Soave itself, the estate that bottled the first single-vineyard Soave and proved the wine could be profound rather than merely pleasant. Where the industrial version was anonymous, Pieropan's Calvarino and La Rocca were specific — a place in a glass. A generation of like-minded growers followed, and today the Classico zone turns out textured, mineral, ageworthy whites that have nothing to do with the flask era.

The comeback rests on one idea: Soave is a hillside wine or it's nothing.

Soave is the rare wine that got famous, got ruined, and then got good again — and almost nobody noticed the third act.

Why the hills matter

Two things separate serious Soave from the supermarket kind, and both come down to geography.

The first is soil. The best Classico vineyards sit on old volcanic basalt and limestone, dark and mineral-rich, which give the wine tension, length and that faint saline snap. The flatter alluvial land can't do it. This is why Classico on the label — fruit from the original hills around the towns of Soave and Monteforte d'Alpone — is such a reliable signal.

The second is the grape. Garganega is late-ripening and quietly aromatic, giving almond, white flower, ripe yellow apple and a lovely waxy texture. It's not a shouty variety — no Sauvignon Blanc zing, no tropical Chardonnay flesh — but a slow-burn grape that rewards a good site with real depth. On the volcanic hills it can age for a decade, turning honeyed and nutty. A little Trebbiano di Soave or Chardonnay sometimes joins it, but the soul is Garganega.

How to buy it well

Simple rules, big payoff. Reach for Soave Classico as your baseline — it points you at the hills. Step up to a single-vineyard or Soave Superiore bottling when you want something that eats with a proper meal and can sit in the cellar a few years. And treat the grower's name as the real quality mark: from a serious hillside estate, Soave is one of the best-value fine whites in Europe, precisely because the name still scares off buyers who remember the flask.

The one thing not to do is over-chill it. Ice-cold, Soave clams up and hides its texture — the very thing you're paying for. Cool, not frozen, in a decent glass.

Where to taste it

Base yourself in the walled town of Soave, castle on the hill above the vines, an easy run east from Verona. Pieropan is the pilgrimage stop — the estate that started the revival — and the surrounding Classico hills hold a cluster of like-minded growers happy to show you what volcanic Garganega can do. It folds neatly into a Valpolicella trip: the two zones sit close, one red, one white, on either side of the city. The Strada del Vino Soave ties the hillside cellars together for an unhurried afternoon. As ever, book ahead, and ask for the older vintages — Soave's age-worthiness is the part that converts sceptics.

We've done the volcanic hills east of Verona. Now swing to the opposite side of the city, west, to where the vineyards run down to the biggest lake in Italy. The wines there are the mirror image of Soave's seriousness — light, sunny, made for a table with a view of the water: juicy Bardolino reds, a pale rosé the locals drink by the jug, and a lake white that's quietly one of the region's sleepers. That's Bardolino and Lake Garda, and Part 6 heads for the shore.