Prosecco

Prosecco is at least 85 per cent Glera; the rest can be Verdiso, Bianchetta Trevigiana, Perera, Glera lunga, Chardonnay or Pinot. Until 2009 the grape itself was called prosecco. The name was moved onto a place, the village of Prosecco in the hills above Trieste, precisely so nobody outside the zone could label a wine prosecco just by planting the vine.

The denomination is a pyramid. At the base, Prosecco DOC covers nine provinces across Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia, mostly flat land, with Treviso and Trieste as sub-zones: this is the volume tier, over six hundred million bottles a year. Above it sit two hillside DOCGs created in 2009: Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore, fifteen communes between the two towns, and Asolo Prosecco on the Asolo hills.

Inside the Conegliano Valdobbiadene DOCG there are two further steps. Rive are forty-three named single slopes (Rive di Soligo, Rive di Guia, Rive di Colbertaldo) requiring hand harvest, lower yields and a vintage date. Valdobbiadene Superiore di Cartizze is the historic cru: 108 hectares between San Pietro di Barbozza, Santo Stefano and Saccol, the most expensive farmland in Italy.

Style matters as much as zone. Spumante is fully sparkling, above 3 bar; frizzante is lightly sparkling at 1 to 2.5 bar; still Prosecco rarely leaves the valley. Since 2020 there is also Prosecco Rosé DOC: Glera with 10 to 15 per cent Pinot nero vinified as red, always vintage-dated.

Green apple, Williams pear, white acacia flower, lemon zest, and often a faint bitter-almond note on the finish that is a signature of Glera.

What you will not find is bread, brioche, toast or hazelnut. Those come from long ageing on dead yeast inside the bottle, which Prosecco does not get, and their absence is deliberate rather than a shortfall.

The body is light, the alcohol usually 11 to 11.5 per cent, the acidity moderate rather than sharp. The bubbles are larger and shorter-lived than in Champagne because the finished pressure is 3 to 3.5 bar instead of 5 to 6. Sweetness varies more than most drinkers expect: a brut tastes lemony, an extra dry noticeably rounder, a Cartizze frankly sweet. Baked apple and tired bubbles mean the bottle is too old.

Serve at 6-8°C. Colder anaesthetises the aromas and leaves only acidity; warmer makes it taste sweet and flabby. Three hours in the fridge, or twenty minutes in a bucket of water, ice and a handful of salt.

Use a tulip glass. A coupe loses the bubbles in a minute and a narrow flute traps the CO2 and gives the aromas nowhere to go. Prosecco is never decanted and never needs air: open it and pour it. Hold the cork and turn the bottle rather than the cork, and do not let it fly: at 3 to 3.5 bar it comes out easily enough.

The classic uses are Venetian. The Bellini was invented at Harry's Bar in 1948 by Giuseppe Cipriani: white peach purée and Prosecco, no syrup. The spritz is Prosecco, a bitter aperitivo (Select in Venice, Aperol in Padua) and a splash of soda. The sgroppino is lemon sorbet whipped with vodka and Prosecco, served between courses or at the end of a meal.

At the table it belongs with fried food above all: fritto misto, salt cod fritters, courgette flowers, soft-shell crabs. Also cicchetti, prosciutto di San Daniele, soppressa, fresh cheeses, white asparagus from Bassano and sweet-and-sour dishes such as sarde in saor. It fails with red meat, long-cooked sauces, aged cheese and chocolate. To finish a meal with it you need a dry or a Cartizze, not a brut: only those carry enough sugar for dessert.

Prosecco is built to be drunk young and the producers say so. An unopened bottle is at its most expressive within about a year or two of the vintage or bottling date on the back label, and that date is the reference point rather than anything you can judge from the outside. Keep it lying down or upright in a dark place at a steady 10 to 14 C, away from the kitchen and away from vibration. Warmth and daylight are what move it: the pale straw deepens toward gold, the apple and pear notes fade toward honey and dried fruit, and pressure slowly drops through the closure.

Once the cork is out, the change is measured in hours. A proper sparkling stopper clamped on and the bottle back in the fridge at 4 to 6 C holds a visible bead for one to three days, and the mousse thins with every hour after that. Teaspoons in the neck do nothing. Never freeze a bottle: the liquid expands and the pressure inside has nowhere to go.

Start with the neck of the bottle. A Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore or an Asolo Prosecco carries a numbered state seal, a printed strip running over the capsule, and the letters DOCG on the label; plain Prosecco DOC does not. Rive plus a village name, or Cartizze, narrows it further to a single hillside. The grape is Glera, and it is usually named on the back label. Colour should be pale straw, the bead fine and quick, the smell green apple, pear and white flowers rather than bread or toast.

The bready, biscuit note belongs to Champagne, Franciacorta and traditional-method Cava, which take their second fermentation in the bottle. Prosecco is made in pressurised tanks and keeps its fruit. The other confusion in a shop abroad is the sweetness scale, which runs backwards to expectation: Extra Dry is sweeter than Brut, and Dry sweeter still. Price sorts the tiers, with DOC bottles the cheapest, DOCG a clear step up, and Cartizze well above both.

Prosecco is the most widely distributed sparkling wine on earth, so the floor is very low and the ceiling is invisible in most shops. Two things on the label do the work.

First the tier. Prosecco DOC is the flatland volume wine. Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG and Asolo Prosecco DOCG are the hills, hand-worked, lower-yielding and roughly twice the price. Rive plus a place name means a single slope with a vintage date; Valdobbiadene Superiore di Cartizze is the historic cru.

Second the sweetness. Brut is 0 to 12 grams of sugar per litre, extra dry 12 to 17, dry 17 to 32. Buy brut for the aperitivo and for anything savoury; extra dry if you like the rounder traditional style; dry only for dessert.

Expect USD 12 to 18 for DOC, USD 18 to 30 for DOCG and USD 35 to 55 for Cartizze; GBP 8 to 14, GBP 14 to 22 and GBP 28 to 45. Below about USD 10 you are buying bulk wine bottled to a price. Vintage is almost irrelevant: freshness is everything, so take the most recent bottling and drink it within a year.

Valdobbiadene, forty minutes north of Treviso, is the centre. Above the town the Conca d'Oro opens up, the amphitheatre of hills that holds Cartizze: the road climbing to San Pietro di Barbozza, Santo Stefano and Saccol runs through the 108 most expensive hectares of farmland in Italy, and one look at the gradient explains why the harvest is done by hand.

At Santo Stefano there is the Osteria senz'Oste, an unstaffed farmhouse where you let yourself in, help yourself to wine, cheese and soppressa, and leave the money in a box. It has become famous and crowded, but the idea behind it exists nowhere else.

The Strada del Prosecco, laid out in 1966 as Italy's first wine road, links Valdobbiadene to Conegliano through Col San Martino, Farra di Soligo and Rolle. Worth the detour: the Cistercian abbey at Follina and the Molinetto della Croda at Refrontolo, a water mill built into a waterfall. The landscape has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2019.

Conegliano has Italy's first oenology school, founded in 1876, and an altarpiece by Cima da Conegliano in the cathedral. Come in spring, when villages take turns hosting the Primavera del Prosecco Superiore from March to June, or in September for the harvest.