Grape Variety: Prosecco

Colour: White

Dry, lemony, and bubbling Prosecco is Italy’s answer to refreshing, well-made, sparkling wine. Created from predominately Prosecco grapes in the northern Veneto region of Italy in the foothills of the Alps, Prosecco is light, affordable, and fun. Traditionally Prosecco was made as a soft, somewhat sweet wine with just a little fizz, but today’s versions are dry and very bubbly. Sometimes combined with a small amount of Pinot Blanc or Pinot Grigio grapes, Prosecco is made using the Charmat method rather than the Champagne method, the French method of making sparkling wine. The Charmat method allows the wine to go through the second fermentation in pressurized tanks rather than in individual bottles.

Straw-coloured Prosecco, with its overtones of citrus, melon, lemon, almonds, and honey, is a perfect summer wine. It is crisp and clean with small bubbles and pairs nicely with seafood - especially calamari and crabmeat, salads, and even all but the heaviest pastas.

Most Prosecco is at its best when consumed within three years of its vintage, but the highest-quality Prosecco can be aged for up to seven years.

Venetians consider Prosecco an ideal apperitivo or ombrette (pick-me-up). Prosecco is also delicious when combined with fresh peach juice to make Venice’s most famous cocktail, the Bellini.

Prosecco Bellenda is vinified in stainless steel and then by charmat method for two months and is clean, fresh and elegant, with delicate, persistent bubbles that enhance its subtle citrussy fruit. “Definitive Prosecco, as chiselled as a piece of pink Verona marble, Bellenda’s Brut doesn’t make even a nod to Champagne. Its sharp, mineral-laden lemon flavours seem designed with shrimp scampi in mind,” enthused Wine and Spirit magazine.

Casa Coste Piane, conversely, is a small estate (a piffling 5ha and only 30,000 bottles) in Santo Stefano, heart of the Valdobbiadene area. For generations their wine had been sold in bulk but since 1983 they decided to bottle the production themselves. Unusually, they make their wines in the ancestral fashion (metodo ancenstrale).

The vineyards lie on slopes close to the cellar. The vines are on average 60 years old (some are pre-phylloxera!!) and their roots can grow up to 30-40 metres long. This Prosecco is a gem, it is one of the few made in the champenoise method wherein the second fermentation takes place in the bottle. Harvest is usually between the last week of September and the first week of October. In April the wine is bottled without the addition of yeast and sugar, subsequently the indigenous yeast contained in the wine starts a second spontaneous fermentation that lasts for approximately four weeks. After this the wine spends a further four weeks sur lie. The process of “disgorgement” is not practised, therefore the yeasts are still present in the bottle… any haziness is entirely natural.

This fine Prosecco is clean, pure and elegant, mineral with crackling citrus notes, easy-drinking and at the same time complex.