2021 Pieropan Soave Classico La Rocca DOC
Producer: Pieropan
Region: Soave, Veneto
Country: Italy
Grapes: 100% Garganega
Vintage: 2021
ABV: 13%
Vivino: 4.1
Drink By: 2031
Occasional Wine Note: Soave is right! This one has a heavier mouthfeel with sweet stone fruit and hints of biscuit and baking spices imparted from time in wood with some lees aging. This made our portfolio because of both its uniqueness and quality.
James Suckling
Critic Score: 95
A different, fuller-weighted brood, boasting ample stone fruits, nutmeg and truffle. Savvy use of oak (tonneaux and larger format French) and extended lees ageing. A vineyard purchased in 1976, situated directly behind the town's castle. Lower altitude, with clay and limestone (rather than the more pervasive volcanics), finding effortless confluence with a winemaking approach that has long-defined this fuller-weighted, late-harvested, highly textural expression. While an outlier stylistically, there is often a fleck of botrytis, all tamarind and dried mango, that melds with the underlying tension to impart generosity and evince authority.