Riviera del Brenta DOC

The Brenta canal runs from Padua to the Venetian lagoon, and for three centuries it was the summer road of the Venetian aristocracy, lined with the villas they built to escape the city. This denomination, recognised on 21 June 2004, covers the farmland between and behind those villas, and it is led by its white wines.

The Terroir The registered file gives the clearest account of aroma formation in the corpus. Among the factors characterising the area, it says, is a climate with sea breezes that moderate temperatures by day and lower them appreciably at night, favouring the formation of aromatic precursors in the berries. The soils run from sandy — where the white varieties benefit from cool, deep ground and give wines of good acidity — through fertile medium-textured land, to a clay the file calls tenace, tenacious, which produces the vegetative and productive balance ideal for the black varieties, giving colour, degree, structure and character.

The Villas The Riviera del Brenta is one of the great architectural landscapes of Europe. Villa Foscari, called La Malcontenta, was built by Palladio in the 1550s at Mira; Villa Pisani at Strà is the largest of them, with a park, a maze and a ballroom ceiling by Tiepolo. The burchiello, the towed passenger barge that carried Venetians up the canal, still runs the route. The vineyards are the working land behind that frontage.

Grape Varieties Whites first: Chardonnay, Pinot Bianco, Pinot Grigio and Tai. Among the reds, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Carmenère, Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso and Raboso. Sparkling and frizzante versions are permitted across the whites.

Tai, and What Happened to Tocai That fourth white is worth explaining. The grape is Tocai Friulano, and in 2005 the European Court of Justice settled a long dispute with Hungary over the Tokaj name: from 2007 the Italians could no longer call it Tocai. Friuli renamed it Friulano; the Veneto chose Tai. Same variety, two names, decided by a court — and the reason a Veneto label reads differently from a Friulian one for identical wine.

The Critical Take This is cooperative country and the wines are made to a price. The whites are the reason to bother: the file’s claim about night temperatures and aromatic precursors is real, and the Pinot Bianco and Tai have more perfume and better acidity than the flatness of the land would suggest. The reds are ordinary. The denomination’s largest historic cellar, founded at Dolo in 1947, has recently passed into outside ownership, which tells you where the economics sit.

At the Table Lagoon and plain cooking: sarde in saor, risotto with lagoon goò, baccalà mantecato, and fried moleche when they are in season. Serve the whites at 9–11°C.

Benchmark Producers Cantine Riviera del Brenta at Dolo and Cantina Alta Padovana at Campodarsego, which between them account for most of the bottling.