Soave, Veneto later sold the castle to the Gritti noble family. In 1797-1805 the city was under French rule. In 1809 there were small fights between French and Austrian troops in the vicinity. Later Soave was included in the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, and in 1866 became part of Italy. The Castle of Soave is a typical medieval military edifice, commanding the neighbourhood of the city from the Tenda Hill. It comprises a "mastio" (donjon) and three lines of walls forming three courts of different size. The outer line, with a gate and a draw bridge, is the most recent, built by the
Soave (wine) minimum of 24 months (with at least 3 of those months being in the bottle) before it is released on the market. By the mid-1990s Soave was producing around 6 million cases annually with more than 80% of that being produced by the region's local co-operative and sold in bulk to importers who release the wine under private labels. A sizable amount of this wine comes from the flat "pianura" land outside the hilly classico region in the heart of the Soave zone. Most of the more critically acclaimed Soave comes from the hillside vineyards in the Classico zone though