{"id":8577,"date":"2024-12-10T13:55:16","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T13:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lantierideparatico.netechlab.it\/the-little-known-italian-wine-region-that-rivals-champagne\/"},"modified":"2025-01-14T10:45:18","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T10:45:18","slug":"the-little-known-italian-wine-region-that-rivals-champagne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lantierideparatico.it\/en\/the-little-known-italian-wine-region-that-rivals-champagne\/","title":{"rendered":"The little-known Italian wine region that rivals Champagne"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Franciacorta, near Milan, makes an elegant wine, more softly sparkling than prosecco \u2014 and its vineyards are still family-owned<\/h5>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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I<\/span> know a trick question when I hear one. \u201cRed or ros\u00e9?\u201d Gabriele Cristini asked as he proffered a plate of slow-cooked beef on a bed of polenta. The answer was so obviously, so screamingly \u201cred\u201d that I smelt a rat. Then he whipped out a bottle from behind him \u2014 not just any ros\u00e9, but sparkling! \u2014 and popped the cork alongside my prejudices. Turns out melt-in-mouth meat and palate-cleaning fizz is an unlikely but heavenly match.<\/p>

Italy is notoriously a land of food rules: no cappuccino after midday, no chicken with pasta, no parmesan on fish \u2014 and certainly no pink bubbles with a juicy slab of manzo. But here in Franciacorta, in eastern Lombardy, about an hour northeast from Milan \u2014 where Cristini is the chef at Corte Lantieri, a family-owned winery, restaurant and elegant B&B \u2014 the normal rules don\u2019t apply. This is the land of sparkling wine and, because this is Italy, there\u2019s a sparkling wine for every course, feeling and every occasion.<\/p>

There\u2019s the regular brut, of course, and extra brut. There might be dosaggio zero<\/i> \u2014 where no sugar has been added to the sparkling process, so you can really taste the grape beneath the bubbles. You might have a millesimato<\/i> \u2014 grapes from a particularly good harvest that have been aged on lees for at least 30 months. And then there\u2019s something you won\u2019t find anywhere else in the world: sat\u00e8n<\/i>, whose bubbles are smaller, softer \u2014 a mouthful of cream instead of gas, thanks to a lower bottle pressure.<\/p>

Italy\u2019s \u201cprosecco hills\u201d of Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia, to the east, disgorged more than 616 million bottles in 2023 compared with Franciacorta\u2019s 19.5 million. But comparing Franciacorta and prosecco (which is made predominantly from glera grapes) is like comparing rubies with costume jewellery. The corks both pop; the glasses both fizz. But in the mouth, Franciacorta is a softer, more elegant wine \u2014 as complex as the area from which it comes. For those of us who find prosecco too sweet and champagne too expensive, it\u2019s a sparkling Goldilocks \u2014 just right.<\/p>

Sandwiched between Brescia and Bergamo, a landscape whittled by the glacier that hollowed out neighbouring Lake Iseo, Franciacorta isn\u2019t, at first glance, the Italy that launched a thousand coffee-table books. Instead of Piedmont\u2019s rolling hills it\u2019s relatively flat; where Chianti is dotted with delectable Renaissance villages Franciacorta\u2019s ancient towns are interwoven with modern development. This is the industrial Po Valley, so there are McDonald\u2019s, strip malls, even a motorway slashing through the middle. Arriving can be befuddling \u2014 where\u2019s the bel paese<\/i>? And then you emerge from an industrial estate into a landscape of primeval beauty: Iseo\u2019s icy blues scything through hulking Alpine peaks, a graceful rumple of vine-plaited fields, a campanile straining heavenward. It\u2019s so startlingly gorgeous that you need a glass of wine to recover.<\/p>

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That\u2019s the view, anyway, around Berlucchi, the winery where all this started. In the 1950s a young enologist, Franco Ziliani, sat down with Guido Berlucchi, who was hoping to supercharge his vineyard \u2014 for centuries, Franciacorta had been known for its middle-of-the-road reds. Ziliani had an idea: what if they tried a sparkling white, French-style? By 1961 they\u2019d produced 3,000 bottles of pinot di Franciacorta, one of which today sits dramatically spotlit in a gated cell in Berlucchi\u2019s 17th-century cellar.<\/p>

Their instant success got the neighbours ripping out their old vines and replanting with chardonnay and pinot bianco. Today Franciacorta DOCG is considered one of the strictest appellations on the planet, with rigorous geographical and grape regulation, and a tightly policed traditional (ie champenoise \u2014 where the wine gets a second, bubble-inducing fermentation in the bottle) sparkling method.<\/p>

What\u2019s lovelier \u2014 and here is the bel paese<\/i> at work \u2014 is that the producers are mostly families. Even the behemoth Berlucchi, which produces almost a quarter of Franciacorta\u2019s wine, is run by Ziliani\u2019s three children: Arturo, Paolo and Cristina, who poured me a silky sat\u00e8n. \u201cWe want people to leave here not saying, \u2018I drank a glass of prosecco from Franciacorta,\u2019\u201d she said archly (tastings from \u00a328; berlucchi.it).<\/p>

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I visited Berlucchi at the urging of Giorgio Faccoli, a 24-year-old vintner whose family was one of the first to follow Ziliani in 1963 (that\u2019s another nice thing about Franciacorta \u2014 they all support each other). The Faccoli vineyards (tastings \u00a338; faccolifranciacorta.it) unspool along Monte Orfano \u2014 Franciacorta\u2019s only peak at 452m. The Po Valley\u2019s most ancient rocky outcrop, it births particularly minerally wines \u2014 \u201cruffiano\u201d, Giorgio said, which needs no translation \u2014 and the family amp up the taste by dialling down the sugar. It was an acquired taste, he warned, but a delicious one, earthy and rocky. Nearby, at Caruna (tastings \u00a321; carunafranciacorta.com), I joined locals on a birthday outing as our guide Federica poured us yeasty proto-wine straight from the vat and the enologist-to-be Sofia (Caruna, of course) uncorked the dangerously smooth sat\u00e8n.<\/p>

On the other side of Franciacorta \u2014 in Ome, in the concertina hills below Lake Iseo \u2014 I returned to an old favourite, Al Rocol (tastings with lunch from \u00a329; alrocol.com). Land farmed for generations by the Vimercati family is now a vineyard and agriturismo, where the siblings Francesca and Gianluigi produce not only sparkling wines but also the dry reds and whites of their nonni. I basked in the autumn sun with a pure dolce vita lunch: stuffed casoncelli pasta swimming in butter with a snowdrift of parmesan on top, plus lashings of vino. Afterwards Gianluigi drove me into the hills to see the 15th-century frescoes and 17th-century Venetian graffiti in the tiny church of San Michele, which his nonna had saved from demolition in the 1960s (Via S. Michele 17). \u201cThis is a beautiful area but it\u2019s barely known,\u201d he said as we looked at Franciacorta unfurling beneath us.<\/p>

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He\u2019s right \u2014 scratch the surface and modern Franciacorta polishes into a gem. In Ome, the centuries rolled back as the blacksmiths Angelo and Dario fired up a 1400s smithy, powered by a mighty water-stoked wheel (\u00a34, weekend demonstrations March-November; visitlakeiseo.info). Nearby in Rodengo Saiano, at the Abbazia Olivetana San Nicola, a white-robed monk smiled beneficently as I wafted through his frescoed cloisters (free; visitlakeiseo.info). And atop Monte Orfano, at the Convento dell\u2019Annunciata, I lit a candle in the church then sat on the sun-soaked loggia to taste the dry, highly aromatic chardonnay \u2014 planted by past monks and now cultivated by Bellavista, a local winery that runs the convent as a hotel (tour and tasting \u00a321; conventoannunciatafranciacorta.it). That night I sidled west to sleep in yet another monastery \u2014 Cappuccini Resort, built on Monte Orfano in 1569 by Capuchin monks, abandoned, and lovingly restored into a heavenly eyrie by the owner Rosalba Tonelli. Swirling mist below us blotted out the modern world as I feasted on lake-swiped fish and her homegrown veg and wine \u2014 just as the monks would have done.<\/p>

In Capriolo, cobbled, squeeze-belly streets took me ever higher to the castle topping the medieval village, the vineyards of Corte Lantieri splaying out below. The noble Lantieri family moved here in the 1500s when they were exiled from their lakeside castle at nearby Paratico by the conquering Venetians. \u201cIt was lucky we were sent here in a way, because we started producing wine,\u201d Gaia Lantieri said, showing me the upturned bottles fermenting in their 1600s cellar. Back then, their red wine made it to the courts of Milan, Ferrara and Mantua; today, their refined bubbles are winning medals, and Cristini, with his wine-paired meals, is rearranging the taste buds of guests like me (tastings from \u00a315; lantierideparatico.it). Modern but traditional, understated but elegant \u2014 Champagne may have ch\u00e2teaux, but my heart is with Franciacorta\u2019s dolce vita.
Julia Buckley was a guest of Corte Lantieri, which has B&B doubles from \u00a3125 (<\/b>cortelantieri.it<\/b><\/a>); and Cappuccini Resort, which has B&B doubles from \u00a3158 (<\/b>cappuccini.it<\/b><\/a>). Fly to Verona or Milan Linate<\/b><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Leggi l’articolo ON-LINE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Franciacorta, near Milan, makes an elegant wine, more softly sparkling than prosecco \u2014 and its vineyards are still family-owned I know a trick question when I hear one. \u201cRed or ros\u00e9?\u201d Gabriele Cristini asked as he proffered a plate of slow-cooked beef on a bed of polenta. The answer was so obviously, so screamingly \u201cred\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8386,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-primo-piano-en","category-press-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lantierideparatico.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lantierideparatico.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lantierideparatico.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lantierideparatico.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lantierideparatico.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lantierideparatico.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lantierideparatico.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lantierideparatico.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lantierideparatico.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lantierideparatico.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}