Italy’s Most Popular … No, Not Just That … The Most Popular Sparkling Wine

The village of Prosecco sits just outside of Trieste in northeastern Italy’s Friuli-Venezia Giulia wine region. It has a long winemaking tradition, the cap of which is that it’s the origin of what’s now the most popular sparkling wine in the world ...

… or, at least that’s one story we’ve found. Drinks writer and historian James Wilson says differently. “As the demand for Prosecco exploded worldwide in the 2000s, the Prosecco producers in northern Italy wanted to protect their wine… So they found a village in Friuli called Prosecco and redrew the DOC [to include it].” You see, though the questionably eponymous village is in Friuli-Venezia, the neighboring Veneto region, to the west, is overwhelmingly famous for producing these sparkling wines.

Regardless, Prosecco wine is made from a grape that used to be called Prosecco but is now called Glera, and its wine has a long history. In 77 ACE, Pliny the Elder wrote about how the wife of Emperor Augustus, Livia, loved that “Pucino” wine. In 1593, English explorer Fynes Morrison listed “Prosecho” among the most famous wines in Italy.

The big date, however, is 1754, when one finds the first record of someone sparkling Prosecco. At that time, Prosecco was sparkled in the “col fondo” (“with the bottom”) method, which sparkles the wine through a secondary fermentation in the bottle, giving you an unfiltered wine as the lees remain. Then there’s 1895, when Professor Federico Martinotti developed a method where winemakers could initiate a secondary fermentation in pressurized steel tanks. Frenchman Eugène Charmat patented the tank design in 1910, and its his name (not Marinotti’s) that’s attached to the method today. The Charmat Method was a big boost to sparkling Prosecco, as it made the wine much more affordable to make. Today, just like nobody means still wine when they talk about “Champagne,” most people only know Prosecco as a bubbly treat.

And do they know it! Prosecco is the best selling Italian wine. It is also the best selling sparkling wine, outselling even Champagne.

In 2018, the Prosecco DOC Consortium announced that the first week of June would be International Prosecco Week. In recognition, please join guest pourer Julie from distributor Plant Wines for a free, walk-up Prosecco tasting. Stop on by any time from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM.