Wine of the Week: Cecilia Beretta Brognoligo Soave Classico
Wine: Cecilia Beretta Brognoligo Soave Classico DOCG
Grapes: Garganega (90 percent), trebbiano di soave (verdicchio) (10 percent)
Region: Verona, Veneto Region, Northern Italy
Vintage: 2011
Price: $6.99
Availability: Trader Joe’s
In the glass: Brognoligo Soave is a fine medium-light citrine color with a clean, clear bright core going out into a faint yellow rim definition, glass-clear meniscus and light viscosity.
On the nose: It is all white peaches and nectarines, then bright green apple, white currants and underlying citrus zest with hints of beeswax and austere chalky limestone-type minerals.
On the palate: This is definitely a bone dry white wine, all fermented in stainless steel with crisp linear notes of green apples, pomelo flesh, crushed white currants, northern cape gooseberries and a kick of apple sauce. The midpalate is well-delineated with soaring, yet mouthwatering acidity, but still soft in the white fruit and rounded, into a finish that really lingers with minerality and citrus.
Odds and ends: For this time of the year, we need to be drinking well-chilled and deliciously dry white wines while indulging our palates with lovely and rounded flavors. Soave is capable of producing superb light and linear wines that really work well when young, but they’re not whites built for aging. Today, the use of the specification “Classico” with the designation “Soave” is reserved for the wines made from grapes harvested from the hillside vineyards around the municipalities of Soave and Monteforte d’Alpone in the original and oldest classic “zone” of Verona. This is a great wine for the warm summer nights to be enjoyed by the glass, chilled to about 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and perhaps even in the company of a cheesy snack of sorts, such as puff pastry baked with cheese inside. Drink it now through 2014.
Gil Lempert-Schwarz’s wine column appears Wednesdays. Write him at P.O. Box 50749, Henderson, NV 89106-0749, or email him at gil@winevegas.com.
