Garda Wine Stories 2025: Part 1 – Garda DOC

Garda Wine Stories 2025: Part 1 – Garda DOC

Those who follow my various Italian adventures on this website are familiar with my affection for the Lake Garda region and its wines. Hence, it was a privilege to attend the recent Garda Wine Stories 2025 event. This is held annually on the shores of the lake, in the fortified town of Lazise. Moreover, the venue was the spectacular Fourteenth-century Customs House (the Dogana Veneta). This is especially apt because it once controlled the trade between Lombardy (on the western lakeshore) and Veneto (on the eastern side).

The Prologue

The well-named Garda Wine Stories event is part of an engaging communication programme devised by Consorzio Garda DOC. To keep things manageable, I’ve divided the article into two parts.  Part 1 dives into Lake Garda itself. It then explains what Garda DOC is, and offers some examples of how the Consorzio is responding to commercial trends. Part 2 follows this up with a personal selection of Garda DOC wines available in the UK.

Let’s start with the lake and then proceed to Garda DOC and its role.

Lake Garda

Lake Garda is enormous. At 52 Km long, 346 metres deep and over 16 Km wide at the widest point, it’s the largest lake in Italy. A product of successive glaciations, the lake occupies 370 square kilometres and has 158 kilometres of shoreline. For comparison, the M25 around London stretches for 188 km, but is considerably less scenic.

As I live in the English Lake District, I can’t help but compare and contrast it with Lake Garda. Both are key tourist areas offering a wide range of interests and activities. Yes, the English Lakes are typically cold and wet, and they don’t have vines (at least for now), but the lakeshores in both places share spectacular beauty, with a wonderful selection of local produce and food, and both are Michelin-starred hotspots.

Environmentally, both places have species of fish that are found nowhere else. Windermere has the Arctic Char, and Garda has the Carpione, both members of the salmon family, left behind when the glaciers retreated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Climatic influence

Narrower and mountainous in the north, the lake gradually opens out into low morainic hills in the south. Lake Garda’s surface area is the equivalent size of Britain’s Isle of Wight, and could swallow all 16 of the largest Lake District lakes sixteen times over!

No wonder that its climatic influence is so important. Firstly, the water moderates climatic temperature extremes – you’ll find olives, citrus and palm trees happily growing here even though it’s so far north. I’m told the last occurrence of frost was in 1706!

Secondly, there’s nearly always a refreshing breeze. The Ora in the afternoon blows north, warming the vineyards further north in Trentino and the Alto Adige. At night and during the morning, a cool mountain breeze known as the Péler blows south. While these winds are influential on the grapevines, they also play a big part in sailing, surfing and other water sports.

Lastly, the lake brings a quality to the light that can’t be easily replicated, a glorious luminosity. Those shimmering reflections not only aid plant growth and ripening but also happen to improve human moods.

Tourism

Every year, Lake Garda welcomes over 13 million tourists who come to spend their holidays in the region, and daytrippers swell that figure to over 20 million. (Windermere in England gets 7 million). Despite the risks of over-tourism, it’s surprising how Lake Garda swallows such numbers, at least outside the July and August peak season. Lake Garda is especially popular with holidaymakers from Northern Europe, particularly Germany, but it’s also popular with Britons. And it’s easily accessible, with excellent air, road and rail links.

Any holiday generates memories, and the best of those last a lifetime. “Emotion recollected in tranquillity”, as William Wordsworth once said. Naturally, visitors also drink the local wines during their stay. Hence, buying Garda DOC wines when back home is a sure way to trigger those memories. Consequently, the Garda DOC wine marketing focus is on Lifestyle rather than Terroir, whether at home or abroad. This has proven to be a successful commercial strategy in recent years.

Garda DOC

Garda DOC was born in 1996. It added sparkling wines to its portfolio in 2016, the best of which rival those of Franciacorta, Trentino and Prosecco. The DOC spans an enormous area, contiguous with ten historical DOCs. Some of these are famous, while all have their individual traditions.

On the eastern (Veneto) side of the lake, there are six: Bardolino, Custoza, Valpolicella, Soave, Monti Lessini, and the Valdadige Terradeiforti. Then, Lugana is located on the southern shore, which straddles the border between Veneto and Lombardy.

Finally, there are three more on the western, Lombardia shore, namely: Colli Mantovani, San Martino della Battaglia and Riviera Valtenèsi. Hence, only the northern end of the lake isn’t covered, which lies in Trentino.

Taken together, the total area under vine totals around 31,100 hectares, most of which lies in the Veneto (27,889 ha), while the remaining 3,211 hectares are in Lombardia. The area certified by the Garda DOC is 1,236 hectares, but it includes more than 250 producers from the entire region.  There are now 20 million bottles made annually, 80% of them exported.

Once a predominantly red wine appellation, it has experienced spectacular volume growth because of the rise of white and sparkling wines.

The role of the DOC

Given the overlap of Garda DOC with the ten other DOCs, you may be curious as to why Garda DOC exists. Its creation in 1996 was not to be “one DOC to rule them all”. Neither was it to merely mop up misfit wines that didn’t fit the rules in the individual DOC territories.

Instead, Garda DOC’s role is to represent the entire lake, promoting and protecting varietal and sparkling wines from the area. It is therefore complementary to those ten historical DOCs and offers their producers more flexibility, offering them “free rein to their imagination“. This is seen in the large number of authorised grape varieties.

Authorised grape varieties

White: Chardonnay, Cortese, Garganega, Friulano, Pinot Bianco, Pinot Grigio, Manzoni, Riesling (Renano and Italico), Sauvignon Blanc, Trebbiano (di Soave and Turbiana).

Red: Barbera, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Carmenère, Corvina, Groppello, Marzemino, Merlot, Pinot Nero, Rebo, Sangiovese, Syrah.

This thriving mix of local and international grape varieties makes Garda DOC a source of an enormous number of quality wines and styles at every price point. But despite this, their common theme is that there is but one lake. The lake brings them all together in a single, modern brand.

There is only one category missing from the Garda DOC profile, namely, still rosato (rosé) wines. This is because rosé is a historical staple of Bardolino and Valtenèsi (known as Chiaretto), hence a Garda Rosé category would compete with them rather than be complementary. Note there is nothing to stop there being a Garda sparkling rosé (whether made by Ancestrale, Charmat or Metodo Classico) because that isn’t a historic style.

Garda DOC Innovations

Lower alcohol wines

The Consorzio has unanimously approved an amendment to the DOC regulations that allows Garda Garganega to be a lower 8.5% ABV, down from the existing 10.5%. The intention is that this will apply from the 2025 harvest. Note that this isn’t a no/zero alcohol initiative. However, it does allow producers the opportunity to follow the explosive commercial trend towards lower-alcohol wines by making lighter wines using established viticultural and vinification techniques. The result is lighter and fresher wines with fewer calories.¹ Perhaps 2% doesn’t sound too big a change, but it’s nearly 20% less alcohol and positions Garda DOC at the forefront of this innovation. It also reverses the tendency of climate change to produce ever more alcohol. Other Italian appellations, such as Prosecco and Tre Venezie Pinot Grigio, have made similar rule reductions.

Distribution

“2025 marks a strategic step: from understanding how the denomination is perceived to engaging directly with key distribution players, we are ready to chart a course toward a DOC Garda that is increasingly recognisable, present, and valued across HoReCa, large-scale retail, and international channels” said Paolo Fiorini, President of the Consorzio Garda DOC. The opportunities for Garda in this sector lie particularly in new export markets and growth in the HoReCa ² sector in existing markets. Research shows that Garda wines can improve their HoReCa market share through value pricing, simple branding and staff training.

Collaboration

The basic premise of Garda DOC is that they and the ten other Garda DOCs are stronger together. In other words, collaboration, not competition, is key.  For example, this was seen in February 2025 at the prestigious annual Vinexpo-Wine Paris exhibition, where, under the single  “Lake Garda Wines” banner, five Consorzia (Garda, Bardolino, Custoza, Lugana and Valtènesi) exhibited together for the first time in a shared space.

This is an unprecedented move in Italy. There is no plan to formalise such initiatives. Rather, it exploited the synergy of the five bodies opportunistically, and it may happen again. After all, with tighter budgets and increasing expenses, it made an ideal way to carry out promotional activities. Indeed, we’ve seen similar recent initiatives in the UK exhibitions, for example, with Wines of Australia and Wines of New Zealand coming together under one roof. Perhaps Garda Wine Stories will do something similar in Britain? Here’s hoping so.

And Finally

I don’t know about you, but after all this, I’m gagging for a drink. Hence, Part 2 explores some of the Garda DOCs’ representative grape varieties and wine styles. Make no mistake, there are many, many high-quality wines and producers to choose from. Hence, there are recommendations for wines currently available in the UK, with food pairings and an interactive map.

That way, if you’ve been to Lake Garda or are planning to go, you’ll then have your own Garda Wine Stories.

Location

Consorzio Garda DOC
Via Bassa 14
37066 Sommacampagna
Verona
Italy

What3words Location

 

 

 

 

 

Notes

1. No/Low-alcohol wines are wines made in the usual way. They are then de-alcoholised, usually by vacuum evaporation in a spinning cone column. Although this is a growing market segment and legal in the EU, such wines remain specifically banned from production (but not sale) in Italy. Any Italian producer offering such wines needs to have them dealcoholised in bulk in France, Spain or Germany, which have become the market leaders. No/Lo production is a controversial subject, where proponents say it offers commercial opportunities, can reduce surplus wine stocks, and would enable Italy to catch up with other European countries. Opponents say it makes poor-quality wine, so undermining hard-won reputations.
2. HoReCa – the Hotel, Restaurant and Café market segment.