Soave aims to be ‘young, beautiful and smart’

The Soave Consortium has revealed the three keywords that will be used to communicate the “qualitative excellence” of the Northern Italian appellation to a new generation of consumers.

The Soave MultiVerse, as this new promotional format has been named, is built upon three foundations.

The first of these is speaking to young people, in particular the 30-40-year-old bracket, and using their language. Discussing the importance of this aspect, Lucia Vesentini, who heads up the Consortium’s communications, told db at this year’s Vinitaly: “We have to speak to new consumers that are ready to buy, but don’t know about Soave yet.”

The second foundation is to emphasise the region’s beauty, both that of the Medieval-era town of Soave, and the surrounding Garganega, Trebbiano and Chardonnay vineyards. As well as presenting some benefits to the region’s potential as a wine tourism destination, it also assists in conveying a message of how the beauty of a wine and its place of origin are connected.

Incidentally, while the first two of the key words are given in Italian as ‘giovane’ and ‘bello’, the third and final one, ‘smart’, is only written in English, due to the absence of a direct Italian translation. The word was chosen to suggest that, beyond just demonstrating intelligence, the region can also be quick to adapt to change in order to preserve its heritage. Vesentini explained: “We want to be smart about richness, history and tradition. We want to save it.”

In a press release, Soave Consortium director Igor Gladich, who was appointed to the role last year, was quoted as follows: “‘With Soave MultiVerse, we just want to talk about the future: a shared future that looks to young people and speaks to them using their language. We want to do this by simplifying the messages to be conveyed because this is the only way we can be sure to reach the listener’s soul. Here in Soave, there’s a real aspiration for the future and the Soave Programmatic Manifesto we’ve presented today is headed exactly in this direction.”

This new approach to marketing Soave is also being complemented by a bold new take on pairings. Instead of pushing traditional local dishes, such as grilled whitefish from Lake Garda, to go with the wine, Vesentini said that the Consortium has had “a lot of success” in pairing Classico, Superiore and Recioto expressions of Soave with different types of poke, the Hawaiian dish of diced raw fish on top of rice with various accompaniments.