Garda Veneto is the Venetian part of the Garda DOC which is split between the western edge of Veneto, in north-east Italy, and the eastern edge of Lombardy. Perhaps obviously, the first part of the title refers to the eponymous lake – Italy's largest at 32 miles (52km) long and 10 miles (17km) wide – whose waters reflect light back up the slopes and moderate temperature variations.
The DOC's surface area is sizeable, and is in fact roughly equivalent to that of the lake itself. It is divided into several zones which spread from the lake's edge, where it overlaps with the Bardolino and Bianco di Custoza zones, to the hills 15 miles (24km) east of Verona, where it meets the vineyards of Soave and Gambellara. The title covers 31 communes between the provinces of Mantua and Brescia in Lombardy and 40 communes in the province of Verona in Veneto. The regulations for the Garda DOC allow the producers to select only the best grapevines to suit their vineyards’ conditions, from a choice from 18 grape varieties.
The Garda DOC was created in 1996, before which time the wines now labeled as Garda were sold under various other local DOC and IGT titles. The better wines from the Lombardy side of the lake were generally sold as Riviera del Garda Bresciano, whereas those from the Veneto side were limited to the Valpolicella, Bardolino and Soave titles. The soaring demand for varietally labeled wines prompted Italy's wine authorities to create the Garda title, and even in 2011 it remained the area's only wine title covering varietals. It may seem inefficient to have overlapping DOC titles, but the names Bardolino, Soave and Valpolicella became very popular in the 1970s and 1980s, and few were willing to risk changing them in any significant way. Thus an entirely new Garda DOC was born.
For more information on the wines made under this title, see Garda Lombardy.
