Blog: Prosecco | Frizzante & Spumante (2/2)

Around 1990, hardly a day went by with the question: 'What is Prosecco?' This is no longer asked today. Ignorance was followed by the 'simple realization' that it was a banal, sparkling wine drink. But, it is not easy to make good Prosecco and it is also not easy to recognize what good Prosecco is. In our noisy, hectic and busy times, we often lack the sense for the quiet tones. This is the problem of getting on the track of Prosecco. It is a sparkling wine whose origin goes back to a long local history with great tradition. Modern times have contributed to its success with better knowledge of vine cultivation and vinification, as well as better cellar and refrigeration technology.

Prosecco: sounds good, doesn't it?
One could almost assume , a marketing strategist washed with all sparkling wines had come up with this name! Pro already sounds tremendously positive - who would not be for a dry drop, quite secco? Glera is the new name for the grape variety, and it's been around in Veneto for centuries. Like the sparkling wine, Prosecco frizzante, from Conegliano and Valdobbiadene in the province of Treviso. The landscape, where the white grape thrives on precisely defined hills, lies fantastically between sweeping hills north of Venice.

Prosecco the farm wine of yesteryear
For a long time, Prosecco was nothing but a rural but delicate, refreshing wine, drunk mainly on the spot and traveling at most as far as Venice. It is only in recent years that it has been increasingly bottled; thus, in larger quantities, it can also leave the area, and in the meantime it has advanced to become the new star in the bubbly sky. It is just as good late in the morning in a café as it is in the early evening in a bar; Prosecco is good as an aperitif and as a cool refreshment on hot nights. Depending on the quality expectations of the producer, cultivation, harvesting and aging are carried out in different ways. The cooperatives and industrial wineries hardly have the means to separate the different grapes and vineyards. On the contrary, the capable smaller producers give the wine a personal program also in the cellar and in the vineyard. The grapes are preferably delivered in small boxes so that they are not crushed. The pressing takes place as soon as possible. The lower the pressure, the better, and it is best that the grape juice does not come into contact with air, because oxygen destroys the delicate aromas of the flowers. The first thoughts about producing a stable Prosecco that is truly capable of traveling and retaining its youthfulness for longer go back to the last century. It was discovered that Prosecco retains its characteristic qualities if it is left to ferment in the barrel at a low temperature. If you are interested in Prosecco, you should be guided less by externals, such as the color of the bottle, but by who and how the Prosecco is produced.

Prosecco: triumph of a sparkling wine?
The massing of this in itself elegant and delicate sparkling wine from the eastern Veneto raises questions. Its production is actually so small that even Italy's domestic demand can hardly be satisfied. Again and again there are attempts to increase the limited Prosecco production by manipulation with non-resident cask wines. In addition, more and more (Prosecco?) wine is being bottled from far outside the original production zone, with the qualities usually being very modest because they come from exorbitant mass yields - but it does say Prosecco on the bottle. Thus, Prosecco has quickly degenerated into a synonym for a banal, alcoholic beverage. Very few know and are aware of the real and very traditional history of this wine, whose quality is actually appreciated only in a very limited area.

Constantly new brands of Prosecco
Newly launched Prosecco brands are meant to give the feeling of a very innovative scene that seem to be constantly reinventing Prosecco. Fashionable fuss and frippery distract the eye from the actual product, they obscure the view of what Prosecco actually was and is. The instrument of marketing is moving more and more into the foreground. Bright blue bottles become the trademark of a sparkling wine that can look back on a very serious and interesting history.

What is Prosecco?
In the first place Prosecco is the name of a centuries-old white wine grape of the eastern Veneto, which has its best results in the area of Conegliano-Valdobbiadene. Traditionally, Prosecco is consumed locally as a sparkling wine. Pearl wine is not yet sparkling wine [Sekt], but it is also no longer still wine. The saturation of Prosecco with carbon dioxide has always been in the range of sparkling wine, so never exceeded 3 bar pressure. Today, the step to sparkling wine is made by a secondary fermentation in a pressurized tank, where the carbonic acid produced cannot escape [up to 3 bar]. Only in recent times has it been possible for industrial producers to produce Prosecco as sparkling wine, i.e. to bottle it with significantly more carbon dioxide than 3 bar. However, more carbonic acid also means that the sugar content, the so-called dosage, is significantly higher. Sugar is therefore used to buffer the more carbon dioxide, since otherwise Prosecco [as sparkling wine] would taste distinctly sour.