Styles of Prosecco

A confesssion: I rarely drink prosecco. I can’t even remember the first time I drank prosecco. It may have been from a carafe on a patio in an Italian city. I can’t recall the first time I heard the name prosecco, though it was probably in a bar or an Italian restaurant in the UK. Until I started studying wine, all I could have said is that prosecco was Italian and sparkling. Prosecco is an indiscriminate style of wine, easy to enjoy, easy to find, easy to forget, and surprisingly difficult to define.

Yet for the last fifteen to twenty years, prosecco has become central to drinking culture in the UK, and increasingly in the US, without anyone at first realising it. There are nearly 500m bottles produced each year, well over 80m consumed in the US, which is the biggest market by volume. Prosecco has became a by-word for sparkling wine, just as champagne always has been: "a glass of prosecco" to many simply means a glass of sparkling wine, regardless of style.

There’s a simple reason for the global success of prosecco: it's inexpensive. It’s also frothy, light, off- to medium-dry, and, most importantly of all, easy to drink. But the perception of it being an easy-drinking, inexpensive wine overlooks the many styles of prosecco and its complicated, ongoing history.

where

Describing where prosecco comes from immediately becomes complicated, and also shows how radically Prosecco has changed in the last 20 years.

Prosecco is a large DOC in Veneto, north-east Italy, officially created in 2009, although sparkling wine has been made in the region for 200 years. The wines are light and aromatic, called after the high-yielding Prosecco grape variety rather than a region.

In the 2000s, Prosecco suddenly gained international popularity, especially in the UK, a success cemented further after the economic crash of 2007-08 when consumers looked for less expensive wines. Prosecco producers quickly realised the success of the wines had created a significant problem: under EU rules, the name of a grape variety cannot be protected, only that of a region. Therefore, producers around the world were free to call their wines Prosecco, and capitalise on its new popularity.

The solution was ingenious, if dubious. Producers found a small village called Prosecco, drew a huge circle around it, and created the Prosecco DOC which was accepted by Italian and EU lawmakers in 2009. The name of the grape variety was officially changed to Glera, a local synonym of Prosecco. All of this still infuriates Australians, who understandably believe they should be able to label their wines Prosecco, as it’s the name of the variety.

Creating the DOC protected the ongoing success of prosecco, but it has had its downsides. Such a large region means there is a lack of identity; and most prosecco is commercial, high-volume, and inexpensive, further exaggerating its homogenous, rather characterless style. And that means quality Prosecco gets lost in the vast market for sparkling wine.

quality prosecco

The heart of the Prosecco region is Conegliano Valdobbiadene, a DOCG which is limited to 15 villages between the two small towns. The DOCG has a more defined sense of place, with slopes of up to 550m influenced by cooling conditions from the Adriatic Sea which they face; there are 43 rive or individual slopes. From lower yields (13.5 tonnes/ha compared to 18), the wines have more depth and concentration to them: fruity, aromatic, but not simple. Another historic, high-quality DOCG is Asolo Prosecco Superiore, also established in 2009 and a small area in the heart of the region where quality wine is produced.

The fruit aromas of generic prosecco are often confected rather than fresh, with aromas of peardrops rather than pears. The best prosecco from these slopes are riper, juicier, fleshier, with the smell of fresh rather than wilting flowers.

superiore di cartizze

The highest quality designation is Superiore di Cartizze, a steep, 160ha slope planted to old Glera vines, with limited restrictions on yields. These wines are medium-dry, consistent with the generally sweeter style of prosecco, but there is no mention of the name prosecco on the label: the quality of the wines is detached from the region, which frustrates an overall understanding of the various historic styles. It is difficult to promote prosecco as capable of quality, if the best wines don’t have prosecco anywhere near the label.

However, as good as these wines can be, they’re a hard fit. They smell and taste like prosecco, but they cost a lot more—$40 compared to $15. It’s hard to persuade the typical prosecco consumer to spend that much more on a wine which on the face of it doesn’t taste that much different. In contrast, the consumer who is willing to spend $40 on a bottle is unlikely to do so on a fruity, medium-dry, aromatic wine that has none of the lees character of champagne or other traditional method sparkling wines.

col fondo/sui lieviti

Before the commercial success of prosecco, most of the wines were more artisanal, made in a lightly sparkling style (frizzante). Like many historic Italian sparkling wines, they rarely left the region, enjoyed locally. Production was small and the wines largely unknown. However, the success of prosecco has re-focused attention on these more traditional wines, making the image of prosecco more interesting if yet more complicated and confusing.

Col Fondo means “at the bottom of the bottle,” referring to the sediment resting in the bottle after fermentation. It’s made in the traditional method, but without disgorgement or dosage for a dry, hazy style. Apart from the fruity aromatics of Glera, it’s therefore completely different from most prosecco. It’s often defined as pét-nat but it’s also different from that increasingly fashionable style as pét-nat starts fermentation in tank and finishes it in bottle, whereas Col Fondo has two distinct fermentations. It’s also dry, compared to the often off-dry pét-nat or even sweeter wines made using méthode ancéstrale.

Col Fondo really is its own thing. Except we’re not supposed to call it that any more. In 2002, two producers trademarked the phrase colfondo. As the style became more popular in the last ten years, other producers assumed they couldn’t use the term—but Col Fondo hadn’t been trademarked, colfondo had. In fact, the two producers were happy to let others use the term and promote the style.

The local authorities have only added to the confusion, deciding it was legally impossible to use the Col Fondo term. They came up with another one, sui lieviti, the Italian equivalent of sur lees, a generic term which doesn’t capture the unique style of Col Fondo. There is now a DOCG, catchily called Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore Sui Lieviti DOCG Brut Nature.

These wines have to be dry, with no disgorgement or dosage; they also have to be spumante, which goes against the tradition for light, delicate sparkling wines. In creating an official designation, the authorities have satisfied no one, neither traditionalists, purists, or modern proponents of the wines.

Call it what you will, Col Fondo only accounts for 0.2% of Prosecco production, but it offers a completely different perspective on the region’s wines.

pink prosecco

And now there’s a new style of prosecco—rosé. The Prosecco DOC Rosé was only ratified in 2020, following international trends for all styles of pink, and it’s labelled rosé rather than rosato to appeal to international markets. It has to be 85% Glera, with the pink colour coming from Pinot Nero (aka Pinot Noir). No suprises that it’s been immediately successful, as it’s rosé and prosecco. Production is set to hit 50m bottles and counting. Commercially, it’s an exciting category as the wines are so easy to sell. But it’s still dominated by the bigger brands: some of the more interesting rosato doesn’t come under the Prosecco DOC as they’re not made from Glera. (For example, Col di Luna make a rosato from a local variety called Raboso Piave.)

Exploring the styles of Prosecco is difficult. Generic Prosecco is easy to find, but most commercially available wines taste the same and lack interest. The higher-quality wines are possible to find, but bigger brands still dominate: go to a specialist Italian wine shop for more characterful, individual expressions. Col Fondo production is small, but a natural wine bar/restaurant ought to have a bottle to try.

If it sometimes seems that all Prosecco tastes the same, there are many more interesting wines to try.