MONTE DEL FRA Garda

The Custoza region comprises a charming, gently undulating landscape of fields and vineyards intersected by quiet lanes, set between the languid, sun-drenched, glamorous Lago di Garda to the west, and the tourist mecca of Verona to the east, and almost fully overlaps with Bardolino. It has long flown beneath the radar, production being largely dominated by the co-operatives, and the wines being soaked up by the bars, cafés and trattorias of Verona, with quality not always high on the agenda. As so often, it took the vision of one man, the late Carlo Nerozzi of Le Vigne di San Pietro, to bring the fight to the powerful co-ops to raise qualitative standards, together with the remarkable energy of the Bonomo family, owners of the region’s largest independent producer, Monte del Frà.

The wines are made up of a blend of varieties of which the Garganega (of Soave fame) dominates, with varying proportions of Cortese (Gavi) and Trebbianello (Fruiliano) and a number of other varieties bringing fruit complexity to the structure of Garganega, whilst the infinitely uninteresting Trebbiano Toscana has traditionally brought bulk and blandness.

Monte de Frà comprises 140 hectares of vineyard in Custoza, with the Valpolicella estate of Lena di Mezzo having been acquired in 2006. We have long kept their Valpolicellas and Amarones, which are unusually elegant renditions of these popular reds, and their excellent Soave, but the Custozas came onto our radar lamentably recently, largely due to a glowing revue of them by Jancis Robinson MW of the FT in which her Italian man in the field, Walter Speller, extolled their virtues as ‘an underappreciated haven of white wine quality and value’.

Massimo Bonomo, whose grandfather bought the estate in the 1950s, describes their straight Custoza as ‘our calling card wine. ‘Our Garganega is very gentle, white flowers, and our Cortese is very perfumed – I call it our Chanel No 5’, she says, and Tamlyn Currin of jancisrobinson.com describes it as ‘absolutely every single thing you could possibly ask for in an ‘everyday’ wine. It’s sunlight bright with flowers and fruit. The acidity is nervy and quicksilver and energetic and yet (for those who are not acid freaks) it also has a kind, smudgy softness. If there is a bite to the wine…it’s more of a gentle nibble that has the sweet bitterness of Seville orange pith and apricot kernels. It has mouth-watering salinity and although it is chiselled by freshness, there is a depth to it.’

The single vineyard rendition, Cà del Magro, comprises a field blend of 55 year old vines which includes Garganega, Cortese, Trebbianello and Incrocio Manzoni. Tamlyn Currin continues  ‘it’s quite difficult to describe just how beautiful this wine is, from the first moment. Beautiful, complex, and constantly changing. It’s a wine that pulls off that rare coup of being all things in perfect balance. The perfume, which soars out the glass without a moment’s hesitation, has a spring-like delicacy but a summery confidence…it smells of daffodils, crocuses, snowdrops. The fruit is warm-climate abundant, tropical and lush. The acidity is an element you’re going to feel at the top of your spine, a tingle in the back of your neck more than something you’ll hold in your mouth. Its texture reminds me of handmade paper – rough-smooth; something you want to rub between your fingers. It’s long. It will age, possibly for more than a decade’. The wines are relatively modest in alcohol, and have the versatility to match almost any dish that you could throw at them. And summer beckons!