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History

Prosecco is produced exclusively in north east Italy. Its story began in the area of Conegliano Valdobbiadene over three centuries ago, where the highest quality, Prosecco Superiore, is still produced to this day. A level of quality that in August 2009 was awarded the DOCG, rightly placing Prosecco among truly great wines of Italy.

Under the new system, the historic Prosecco Doc (Conegliano Valdobbiadene and Colli Asolani) have become DOCG, while the areas of northeast Italy that used to make Prosecco Igt can now make the base DOC. The result is that there are now two levels of Prosecco on the market: the DOCG, the peak of the quality pyramid, representing by the Conegliano Valdobbiadene denomination, with its 15 hill municipalities, and the DOC base, covering the provinces of Treviso, Belluno, Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Udine, Pordenone, Trieste and Gorizia, a broad denomination made up of more than 600 munipalicities in Veneto and Friuli.

The DOCG zone is in province of Treviso, stretching over the hills between the small towns of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, 50 km from Venice and around 100 km from the Dolomites. The hills chains stretch from east to west, from the flat plain to the foothills of the Alps.

The first written reference to Prosecco dates back to 1772 in the VIII volume of Giornale d'Italia, in which the academic Francesco Maria Malvolti mentioned the quality of local winemaking “thanks to varieties like Marzemini, Bianchetti, Prosecchi, Moscatelli, Malvasie, Glossari".

At the time, Prosecco was just one of the wines produced but, through their expertise and great determination, the local growers and producers gradually specialised and eventually Prosecco became the only wine made in Conegliano Valdobbiadene.

This success story started in 1876 with the founding of Italy’s first Oenology School for the study of wine: the school is still in Conegliano.

In this way, the Conegliano Valdobbiadene producers began to get the best from the grape varieties used for Prosecco. They embroidered the steep hillsides with vineyards, worked only by hand, and fine-tuned the winemaking process to bring to the fore that fragrant characteristics, freshness and vitality which distinguish this wine from any other.

This was the start of the Conegliano Valdobbiadene sparkling wine method, an evolution of the metodo Italiano, which the local producers adapted in their town original way. This laid the foundations for the success of Prosecco, which started to rocket in 1980s, thanks to the entrepreneurial skills and technical expertise that local growers had acquired over the years.

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