Category Archives: Italian wine

Leveraging Wine & Tourism in Collio DOC

July 30, 2024 By in Italian wine, wine, wine markets, wine tourism 1 Comment

[This is the second in a series of articles inspired by our recent visit to Collio DOC in north-east Italy. Click here to read last week’s introductory report.]

When Sue and I first visited Collio in 2000 we stayed in the newly opened agriturismo rooms at Venica & Venica and in a rustic cabin at La Subida.  We dined well at several memorable restaurants including Trattoria al Cacciatore at La Subida and Trattoria al Giardinetto in Cormons.

Wine Tourism and Economic Development

Guided by articles in Gambero Rosso and La Cucina Italiana (and Ornella Venica’s wise personal recommendations), we found great food, wine, and many fun things to do. The foundations of today’s wine tourism industry were already in place. We returned to Collio in 2015, 2019, and now in 2024. We’ve discovered new hospitality and wine tourism opportunities each time.

A strategic focus on wine tourism makes good sense for Collio and the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region generally. The vineyard area is relatively small compared to the Veneto, for example. Yields are necessarily limited to protect quality. From an economic development standpoint, the two ways to grow for the region are to increase price (through rising reputation, for example) and to leverage the wine’s magnetic pull through tourism development. Both forces are powerful in Collio and they can work together to drive the region forward.

Casanova & Castle, Wine & Golf

More and more high-quality hotels and restaurants can be found today, which is necessary but not sufficient for the growth strategy. This time we stayed at the Relais Russiz Superiore, for example, adjacent to the famous winery (which is now owned by a partnership between Marco Felluga and the Veneto’s Tommasi Family). One of our favorite wineries, Gradis’ciutta, offers visitors the opportunity enjoy the hospitality of Borgo Gradis’ciutta, a cluster of buildings that date back to the 1500s with nine rooms and three apartments. Engaging visitors beyond the tasting room counter is clearly a priority today.

The most ambitious investment in tourism and hospitality is probably  Castello di Spessa, where we stayed during our 2019 visit.  The business combines the historic castle (famous for its connection to the notorious Casanova!), hotel rooms, dining and event facilities, well-kept vineyards, a substantial winery operation, and even a golf course. We ran into California winery owners in Collio on holiday, who said that they came for the golf and stayed for, well, everything else!

Collio was a great place to visit 20  years ago and it has grown in every way, but without losing the characteristics that drew us to it originally (and have kept us coming back). But this is just the beginning, according to Ornella Venica, who challenged us to consider how much more Collio and Friuli have to offer to visitors interested in food, wine, history, culture, and nature.

The Vine Academy

Our first stop on this trip to Collio was lunch at the recently opened restaurant at Accademia Vine Lodge. The food and wine were delicious and the setting beautiful, but what sticks in my mind is the fact that this attractive wine tourist destination is also an education institution. When wine tourists are not filling its rooms, groups of earnest students move in.

The Accademia Vine Lodge has a double personality. It is both an attractive venue for visitors like us and also the home of the famous Simonit&Sirch vine pruning institute. The restaurant’s wine list includes bottles from Collio and the region, of course, but also from some of the more than 150 Simonit&Sirch clients around the world.

The vine lodge fascinates me because it reminds us that wine tourism can spring up in many ways. It isn’t just wineries with food or rooms, for example. Here is a case where globally respected technical expertise in the science and art of vine pruning has grown into a venue that has broad appeal.

Collio & the Beach

A highlight of our visit was an evening event called Collio & the Beach, set on a broad shaded patio beside the beach at Baia di Sistiana near Trieste. Could a seaside party draw a different demographic profile than typical winery tasting rooms? This was a wine event, but not just a wine event. Bustling booths were pouring local wines, for example, but the longest lines were for delicious foods such as porchetta, frico, watermelon, and hand-carved local Prosciutto d’Osvaldo.

We sampled from the different wine stations, eventually focusing on Friulano because it is so popular in this region. We were surprised, however, that the longest line was for Pinot Grigio! In fact, the line never ended because some folks got their pour and moved directly to the back of the queue so that they could try another wine.

Pinot Grigio? Really? Here in America, Pinot Grigio is often made in unexceptional styles, designed more to avoid offending than to develop distinctive characteristics. But these Pinot Grigio wines were different because many of them were made in that traditional Ramato style, with lots of skin contact. These wines, which are both old-fashioned and cutting-edge in terms of style, had appeal that spanned the generations. And they matched up perfectly with the traditional food and festive venue.

The 70 Percent Solution

Sue and I keep returning to Collio because offers so much that we enjoy and appreciate in terms of food, wine, culture, and nature. It seems to us that Collio today is doubling down on the “Collio Experience” and not just the wine. That was the case at Collio & the Beach and Castello di Spessa. And the experience especially stood out at  Subida di Monte in Cormons.

Once upon a time, this was a small family winery, but new owners saw the “experience” potential to leverage the winery with hospitality investments, including Locanda alle Vigne. The restaurant features traditional dishes in a fabulous setting. We were there on a late June Thursday night and the place was packed with guests of all ages.

The winery anchors the operation, of course, but the hospitality business generates 70 percent of the revenues, bringing more and different consumers to Collio and its wine.

Back to the Future?

Our Collio journey began at Venica & Venica and La Subida and both are still leading the way. The plans for a wine resort that Giampaolo Venica showed us in 2000 are now very much realized, for example. Very impressive!

La Subida has created a more casual restaurant called Osteria la Preda de la Subida that’s become one of our favorite places to eat. It is popular with tourists, but delights locals, too, with its celebration of the traditional food and wine of the region. It’s where we had our last meal (for this trip) before heading for our airport hotel near Venice.

Collio shows that wine and hospitality are two industries that can leverage each other to generate both happy visitors and also economic development opportunities. Other regions should take note!

Collio Revisited: Tradition & Change in One of Italy’s Great Wine Regions

July 23, 2024 By in Italian wine, wine 2 Comments

Collio DOC is a tiny appellation snuggled up against the Slovenian border in north-east Italy. It is a beautiful place. How beautiful? After our recent visit to the region, I noticed that Sue changed her computer’s desktop image to a photo of these hills. Collio replaced another beautiful vineyard area, Cartizze, on the screen, which last year replaced a photo of the Douro Valley. The competition for real estate on Sue’s desktop is fierce. Collio is that beautiful.

2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Collio Consortium and we were there to catch up with what is new in this dynamic region, best known for its stunning white wines. This was our fourth trip, having previously visited in 2000, 2015, and 2019. We are grateful to our Colliio Consortium hosts and to everyone who answered our questions and let us sample their wines.

Continuity and Change in Collio

Collio is a region of paradox and contradiction, which makes it very interesting indeed. Start with geography. Colllio is defined by its most distinctive common elements, hills and soil. As the map above (which hangs on Sue’s office wall) shows, Collio is crescent-shaped, with winegrowing concentrated in the hills at the two extremes. The soil profile here is called ponca, stratified marl and limestone rich in minerals and fossils, that resulted from the the rising seabeds that created the hills. Hills and ponca. That’s Collio. Seems pretty simple.

But it is more complicated than that and the wines can have great complexity because of variations in vineyard aspect, grape varieties, clones, blends, and winemaking methods. What seems timeless and simple on first glass is more like a kaleidoscope when examined closely.

And the region and its wines have changed over time, or at least that is how Sue and I have experienced it. We discovered Collio Sauvignon on our first visit and we were swept away by wines like the famous Venica Ronco delle Mele. These wines seemed to us to be a completely different take on this famous wine.

The More Things Change …

We still enjoyed the Sauvignon when we returned in 2015, but other wines caught our attention, including Ribolla Gialla and Friulano. I’m not sure if the style of the Sauvignon had changed or if we were just more open to these new varieties, but it was fun to explore them. Our 2019 visit was focused on Collio Bianco, which are blends of white wines of the region. These white blends were once “kitchen sink” wines meant to use up leftover grapes, but they work so well that they have become signature wines for many producers.

For this trip we explored all of the white wines, including also Pinot Grigio and Malvasia, in blind tastings led by the talented wine writer and Friuli wine expert Richard Baudains. One thing that stood out from the tastings, winemaker meetings,  and winery visits, in addition to the overall excellence of the wines, was the rapid pace of change in the post-covid era. We found a lot to consider. A quick list includes:

  • Generational transitions

The Consortium’s 60 years is short in terms of the region’s wine history, but long on the human scale that defines family wineries. As in many parts of the world, this is a time of transition, with one generation seeking to pass the wine torch to another.

Sometimes the generational transitions are smooth, but sometimes less so. Children who have seen how hard their winemaking parents must work often opt for a different lifestyle. Or perhaps they have different ideas about what their wine should be. In Collio, we were told, one of the effects is that more women were finally entering the industry.

  • Back to the Future wines

I think the generational transition must have gone well at Polje, for example, where we talked with winemaker Sebastian Juretic while sipping his fine wines and looking our over desktop-worthy vineyard views. He loved the winemaking life with all its travails, but he didn’t want to make wines just like his father had, so we tried his Labuccia, an amphora-fermented Ramato-style wine.

Ramato is a traditional Friuli style of wine, with extended skin contact to create a copper color. Ramato is part of the new Collio but it is rooted in the past. Indeed some say that this region is the cradle of orange or skin-contact wine. Sebastian showed us photos of his grandparents making wines like his, but in old-fashioned open tanks, not sleek stainless steel.

  • Investment from outside the region

Several forces are at work driving increased investment in Collio wine from outside the region. Generational change is one of them. This factor was part of the story, we were told, of the iconic Jermann winery’s 2021 acquisition by the Antinori family.

Economic forces are also important. Tenuta Borgo Conventi, for example, is now part of the dynamic Villa Sandi group as that important Veneto wine group has expanded to other Italian wine regions in order to build scale and diversity in its portfolio of offerings. I was discussing this with Borgo Conventi winemaker Paolo Corso over a glass of his fine Sauvignon when I remembered where I had tasted the wine before. It was during a lunch last year at Villa Sandi. The winery executives there were proud to show off this important part of their collection.

This is not a new trend. Collio’s distinctive wines have long attracted attention from outside the region. Attems has been part of the Frescobaldi group for more than 20 years. However, the combination of generational transitions and market forces today seems to be strengthening the investment flows.

Small is Beautiful

Collio is a very small wine region. The Consortium has only about 300 grower and producer members farming 1300 hectares and producing 7 million bottles. Just a drop in the global wine bucket, if you know what I mean.

But the wines are distinctive and differ both from other Italian regions and from each other, but with the hillside and ponca common thread to tie them together. Now more than ever, it’s the kind of place and the style of wines that people are seeking out.

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Sue and I send our thanks to everyone who took time out to meet with us during our brief visit to the Collio region. Special thanks to Lavinia Zamaro, Guilia Formichetti, Federica Shir, and Richard Baudains. Cheers to Dutch wine writer Fred Nijhuis, who shared his insights with us during this trip.

Wine Book Review: Italy in a Wineglass

July 16, 2024 By in book reviews, Italian wine, wine, wine history 1 Comment

Italy in a Wineglass: The Story of Italy Through its Wines by Marc Millon (Melville House Publishing, 2024).

They say that every glass of wine tells a story, so if you get enough of the right wines together, can they tell a really big and complicated story? Can you tell the history of Italy through its wines?

That’s the challenge that drives this very interesting new book by Marc Millon. Sue and I recently returned from a trip to Collio in Italy’s northeast near the border with Slovenia (watch for our first report next week) and Millon’s book kept me engaged during the long trans-Atlantic flights. I am a fan.

Zooming In and Out

The story is organized chronologically because the idea is to tell a history (you’d probably do it by region if wine itself was the point). The chapters follow a set pattern that I call PGP for Particular-General-Particular.  Particular, to start off with something concrete, then zoom out to General to make broad points, then focus on Particular again to drive home the point. It’s a very effective way to tell a story.

Millon begins each chapter with a personal vignette that evokes a particular time, place, wine, and usually good food, too. If you’ve been to Italy a few times it’s likely that you will be familiar with some of the places that Millon visits and the experiences he reports. A concrete personal connection is made.

The vignette is chosen to launch us into a more general discussion of a slice of Italy’s rich political, social, and economic history. Millon’s style here is fluid and footnote-free. Not simple in terms of ideas, but not difficult to understand. The history section almost always finds a way to bring the development of Italy’s wines and wine industry into the story.

Finally, Millon zooms in to provide detailed profiles of a few particular wines that he has chosen to illustrate some particular point. If the vignette introduction and the historical centerpiece haven’t hooked you, the stories of the wines surely will. I was interested that a couple of the wines that Millon chooses were also on the list I compiled for my book Around the World in Eighty Wines, and for pretty much the same reasons.

Conflict and Economy

Two noteworthy threads run through the book. The first is war and conflict, which has a big impact on wine, generally not in a good way. This especially hit home for me since we were headed to Friuli, where so many battles have been fought over the years (and indeed, Millon’s chapter on Wars and Wine opens in Cormons).

The second thread is economic change. We learn a lot about changing systems of wine production (feudal, sharecroppers, cooperatives, the “economic miracle,” and more) and how they have affected wine, wine producers, and the wine industry. If Italian wine economics were all you cared about, this would be a good introduction because the key elements are there, set firmly in a broader context.

How does Italy’s history (and its wineglass) conclude? Millon brings his book to a close by surveying the many problems facing Italian wine and wine more generally in a chapter he calls “Back to the Future.” He even offers a few wines to help the reader think through the journey (Gravner’s Ribolla Gialla from Friuli is one of them).

By the last glass, you’ve learned a lot about Italy, Italian wines, and how they are connected. An excellent read! The only thing that would have made it more satisfying is if Delta Airlines offered better wines (preferably fine Italian wines) for its passengers to enjoy while reading Italy in a Wineglass at 38,000 feet!

Cantina Tramin: Strength in (Small) Numbers in Alto Adige

June 18, 2024 By in cooperatives, Italian wine, wine, wine history, wine markets Leave a comment

Your first impression when you arrive at Cantina Tramin is that you’ve entered some sort of space portal. Here in the lush Alto Adige hills, you expect to see a sturdy old building housing Cantina Tramin winery, but it’s not there. Or rather it is there, but it is hidden by a very modern addition that was completed only in 2010. Old and new.

The new Tramin is striking. You feel like you are approaching a space ship when you drive up. And you feel like you are peeking out among the vines when you look out from inside.  It is quite an experience.

Quite a Surprise

The wines are quite an experience, too, especially the white wines. Bright, bold, complex. They fit the image of the winery perfectly. The surprise comes when you learn that this sleek, modern winery with its terrific wines is a cooperative, born from crisis more than 100 years ago.

Sue and I have visited the Alto Adige several times and we are always impressed  by the great wines we taste and the tiny vineyards we encounter. The vineyards cling to the hills in this region with the valley floor given over in many places to the tree fruit for which the region is well known. There are about 5000 hectares of vineyards and about 5000 winegrowers tending them. Even if math isn’t your strong suit I think you can tell that the average holding is pretty small and the smallest of them are like grape-strewn postage stamps.

1898 and All That

The Cantina Tramin cooperative took flight during a crisis in 1898. The many small growers lacking market power relative to a few large buyers, facing ruinously low prices, and led by Tramin’s parish priest, pledged to work together rather than run a race to the bottom. This is how wine cooperatives spring up. But as anyone who has served on a committee can tell you, it isn’t always easy to make collective enterprises succeed.

Cantina Tramin followed the well-traveled road in its early days, producing bulk wines (mainly red wines from the Schiava grape) and selling them off at low prices to be bottled, marketed, and sold by others. Then in the 1980s came the realization that competition for basic wines in the bulk wine market might not be economically sustainable, especially for a region with such fragmented vineyard ownership.

So the decision was made to radically change the cooperative’s model, moving from quantity to quality, from bulk wine to branded wine, from red to white. It was an expensive decision because it meant replanting by individual cooperative members and cellar investment by the group. The fantastic new winery that opened in 2010 was the crowning touch, but it came after much hard work and investment by the 160 families and their 270 hectares of vines.

Bold DNA

Bold moves seem to be in Cantina Tramin’s institutional DNA. Creating and later expanding the cooperative was a risky decision, albeit one that was more or less forced upon the grower families at the start. Breaking away from the quantity-driven bulk wine model was a big step, too. I am sure there were doubts and second thoughts at the time, but that bet has paid off very well.

You get a sense of the strategic thinking at work here when you look at the winery’s Chardonnay program. Chardonnay does really well here and there is a lot planted, but it wasn’t suited to the kind of buttery Chardonnay that was in fashion 20 years ago. So rather than release a 100% Chardonnay, Tramin created “Stoan” (stone), a blend of Chardonnay, Sauvignon, Pinot Bianco, and Gewurtztraminer. Only some years later, when tastes had changed, did Tramin release “Troy” (trail), a pure Chardonnay that spends a year on the lees.

Big Bets Pay Off

Maybe the biggest bet of all is Tramin’s signature wine, the Nussbaumer Gewurtztraminer. Although it is difficult to know for sure, many think Gewurtz originally hails from this region. It sure does well here, whatever its origin. It is an easy wine to enjoy when done well, as it is at Tramin, but not necessarily an easy wine to sell. There’s the name, which some consumers are afraid to pronounce, and then there are the different styles of Gewurtz that you find, from austerely dry to sweetish and flowery.

The Nussbaumer is more about minerality than flowers. Made from very ripe grapes, which account for the surprisingly high 14.5 percent abv, it is all about balance. The winery’s food pairing recommendations are speck (the delicious smoked prosciutto product this region is known for) and saffron risotto with licorice powder.

Winebow represents Cantina Tramin in the United States and a look at its online catalog shows a surprisingly wide range of wines including other white wines like Pinot Grigio (an important export to the U.S.) and reds, too, including Lagrein, Schiava, and Pinot Noir.

Cantina Tramin is a great success. Could it be a model for other regions? Definitely yes if you are looking for a business model for cooperative success. In terms of organization, Cantina Tramin does everything right, especially in terms of creating strong incentives for winegrower members to produce the best possible grapes and no sacrifice of quality for quantity or collective reputation for individual gain.

It is never easy to get collective agreement for such systems and many cooperatives failed in the past precisely for this reason. One key, we were told, is that Cantina Tramin is not too big so the families know one another and the social contract that binds the members together is as tight as the legal contract. (Not for nothing are Italian cooperatives called cantine socialle). So there is strength in numbers … so long as the numbers are not too big!

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Here are the Cantina Traminb wines we tasted for this report:

Pinot Grigio Classico 2023

Unterebner Pinot Grigio 2022

Stoan Bianco (70% Chardonnay, 20% Sauvignon, 5% Pinot Bianco, 5% Gewurtztraminer) 2022

Troy Chardonnay 2020

Nussbaumer Gewürztraminer 2022

All of the wines were distinctive and delicious. The biggest surprises were the Chardonnay, which was complex with a long finish, and the two Pinot Grigio wines, which set a high standard for wines made from this grape variety.

GD Vajra: Once Upon a Time in Barolo

April 30, 2024 By in Italian wine, wine, wine markets 2 Comments

Once upon a time … That’s how many of our most beloved stories begin, so that’s how we begin this report on the wines of G.D. Vajra. These wines might be best understood in the context of the stories about them. And the stories have surely helped us understand and appreciate what we found in our wine glasses.

So … once upon a time Sue and I were invited to take part in a Zoom interview with Giuseppe Vaira, the second-generation family winemaker of G.D. Vajra. It was a great pleasure to spend an hour (even a web hour) with him.  If you ask him a question, he will tell you a story (once upon a time …) using metaphors to communicate both facts and feelings. I think you can get a sense of what I am talking about from this video. 

Every Glass Tells a Story

Mr. Vaira is such an engaging person that it would be difficult not to like his wines, but the memory of his stories certainly added to the experience. Here are three brief examples to show you what I mean.

Barolo is famous for Barolo, of course. That’s what they make and export around the world. But what do Barolo winemakers like to drink, Mr. Vaira asked. Dolcetto! Not, he made certain to add, because they are cheap (it would be difficult to get as much for a Dolcetto as for a Barolo), but because it can make such an appealing wine.

Dolcetto was once widely planted (and enjoyed), but it lost out to Nebbiolo when the region was replanted after Phyloxxera. G.D. Vajra began making a very special Dolcetto Costa&Fossati in 1979 and it shows what Dolcetto can be. Complex, elegant, great with food. Who would not want to drink a wine like this?  Mr. Vaira’s story made us pull the cork and now we can’t think of Dolcetto the same way.

The Sun? Or the Moon?

The second story is about Freisa, an ancient Piemonte grape variety that you rarely see anymore. Freisa was once very common in the region, we learned and used it to make the base wine for Vermouth. But then came Prohibition in the United States and the bottom dropped out of the Vermouth export market. Most Freisa vines were pulled out so only a little is left.  Many different styles of wine are made from Freisa today, so it would be easy for consumers to get confused. What is Freisa? Well, it depends.

G.D. Vajra’s Freisa “Kyè” plays on this theme. Look at the label. Is it the sun? Or the moon? Hard to pin down. As you might imagine, our minds were racing as we tasted this wine. I imagined that I could sense the Vermouth connection, but that might be the power of suggestion. A unique experience, more moon than sun for me, but maybe it was the residual effect of that solar eclipse a few weeks ago?

At one point Mr. Vaira suggested that we taste the 2020 Barolo wines over a couple of days to appreciate how they evolve. We took it as an opening to sample two different wines, half on one might and half on the next so that we could both compare the terroirs and experience the evolution. You’d do the same thing, wouldn’t you?

Turn It Up to Eleven?

Inevitably each wine came with an image or story to provoke our imaginations. The Coste di Rose comes from a small steep vineyard at the top of a hill. Reaching to the top, the notes tell me, that you are confronted with a tall sandstone dune, a dramatic sight that makes this vineyard’s unique soil profile clear. A wine with emotion, according to the tasting note, with tones of cherry and rose petals, mint, and sweet spices.

I selected the Ravera Barolo to complement the Bricco delle Viole partly because of the difference in terroir but, I admit, mainly because of a note I found where Giuseppe Vaira says, “I am intrigued by Ravera’s indomitable personality. It is crisp like the sound of a Telecaster, straight and electric.” How can you not taste a wine that evokes the iconic Fender guitar that has featured on so many rock hits?

The experiment was quite an experience. The two wines were indeed quite different from each other, showing the influence of terroir, and the second night tasting added more depth and richness. It reminded me of my friend Brian’s advice to always double-decant Barolo wines. These wines have years of development ahead of them, so it will be interesting to revisit them and see how their stories and personalities have evolved.

An Unexpected Favorite

Of all the G.D. Vajra wines we have tasted so far, Sue and I think the humble Dolcetto is our favorite, which is a surprise. But this isn’t just any Dolcetto because great effort was made to select the best heritage clone vines and to plant them in just the right place (a vineyard plot that would have made great Barolo) to tell the story of this historic wine in the most expressive way.

It doesn’t make economic sense to make a Dolcetto like this, but sometimes there are more important things to consider. It is all about the story at G.D. Vajra. I think that’s why their wines are so appealing.

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An article that begins with “once upon a time” and ends with electric guitars needs a theme soung. Here it is. Enjoy. (It’s a Stratocaster not a Telecaster, but you get the idea!)

Fiasco Flashbacks? Rediscovering Chianti Classico

November 28, 2023 By in Italian wine, wine, wine brands, wine history, wine markets Leave a comment

It is called a fiasco.

Fiasco? Yes, I know what you are thinking, but you’re wrong. I’m not talking about what happening in Congress with the debt ceiling. And I am not talking about the bonehead moves your favorite sports team’s coach always seems to make.

A fiasco is a type of bottle. It is bulb-shaped and wrapped in straw that both protects the glass from breakage and keeps the rounded-bottom vessel from tipping over. Back in the day, if you spotted a fiasco you knew instantly what was inside: a tasty medium-bodied Italian wine that probably wouldn’t break the bank when you hit the check-out counter.

Fiasco meant Chianti, which along with Lambrusco and Valpolicella, was the easily recognizable popular face of Italian red wine here in the U.S. The Chianti fiasco was popular with me and my young friends years ago because you got the wine itself and a decorative candle holder (the straw-wrapped bottle) all for the same price. What could be better? The traditional Chianti fiasco still exists, although I don’t see them very often (you can buy empty bottles on eBay if you are into retro decorating).

Sue and I discovered a 1.5-liter fiasco of “red Chianti wine” at Trader Joe’s as this column was being prepared for publication. The fiasco endures!

Chianti Identity Crisis?

I suppose that the move away from the distinctive fiasco was a bit of an identity crisis for Chianti, but it might not have been the only or most important one as Bill Nesto MW and Frances Di Savino explained in their 2016 book  Chianti Classico: The Search for Tuscany’s Noblest Wine.

Nesto and Di Savino argue that Chianti’s historical roots are in a relatively well-defined area that we now associate with Chianti Classico. As Chianti wine became more popular around the world, the Chianti zone expanded and the wine inevitably lost of some its distinctive character. Not all of it represented the original idea of Chianti very well. That’s a more serious identity crisis, especially at a time when there is more and more competition from within Tuscany, within Italy, and around the world.

Product Differentiation

The task for Chianti Classico producers, as it is for quality producers everywhere, is what economists call product differentiation. They need to make consumers aware of the difference between Chianti and Chianti Classico and then, because this is the age of premiumization, to further differentiate the best wines they produce.

The first task – Chianti versus Chianti Classico — is easy from a visual standpoint. Chianti Classico stands out on the shelf with its distinctive black rooster logo. But the wine needs to be distinctive in the glass, too, which has not been as clear in the past when both Chianti and Chianti Classico could be found with quality that varied from excellent down to just fair.

Climbing the Cecchi Chianti Classico Pyramid

The Cecchi family of wine producers invited us to sample their wines and taste the difference and it was an eye-opening experience. The Cecchi winery dates to 1893. Andrea Cecchi, who guided our tasting, is the fourth generation of the family in the business. The family’s home vineyard is Villa Cerna, which they acquired in 1962. The Villa Rosa vineyard was acquired in 2015. Both are complex mosaics of elevation, soil type, and aspect.

We started with their Chianti Classico Storia di Famiglia, which makes up about 60 percent of Chianti Classico production. It is made from 90 percent Sangiovese and 10 percent other grape varieties. Sue took one sip and said “Wow!” This wasn’t like any other Chianti that she tasted recently, she said. Bright, intense, and persistent in the glass. She was immediately taken by the wine’s style and substance. Product differentiation goal #1? Check!

We moved on to Cecchi’s Chianti Classico Riserva wine, Riserva di Famiglia, which is 90 percent Sangiovese and 10 percent Cabernet Sauvignon. Riserva wines are about 35 percent of production. Sue appreciated this wine but didn’t find it as exciting as the first, perhaps because the Riserva might be an attempt to balance the traditional wine identity with the power that the international market sometimes prefers. An excellent wine. And I think Sue’s reaction might have been different if she had tasted it first.

We reached the top of the pyramid with Valore di Famiglia, the Cecchi Chianti Classico Gran Selection wine. Gran Selection accounts for just 5 percent of production. The grapes are 100 percent old-vine Sangiovese from the Villa Rosa vineyard. The wine ages in both oak and concrete. The goal is elegance, limiting intervention so that the identity of the vineyards is not obscured. Goal achieved! A wine of many layers and nuances. Memorable.

Is Chianti Classico a Terroir Wine?

The premise of Chianti Classico is that terroir makes a difference. If it doesn’t, then wines from the larger Chianti appellation (and indeed wines from all over Tuscany) that are made in the same way with the same basic grape varieties should be just as good.

To test the terroir hypothesis we were invited to compare two of the Cecchi Chianti Classico wines that are sourced from two very different vineyard sites.  Primocelle (first hill) Villa Cerna is a particular part of the Villa Cerna vineyard while the Ribaldoni Villa Rosa is from a vineyard of that name with the youngest vines on the estate. The differences showed themselves clearly both on the nose and in the mouth. I enjoyed the violet and iris notes of the Primocolle. Sue was attracted to the elegance and sleek style of the Ribaldoni.

Rediscovering Chianti Classico

Sue says that she enjoyed all the Chianti Classico wines we have tasted recently (and looks forward to a couple of others we have in reserve). Excellent wines are all very different from one another. But she couldn’t forget that first glass of the Cecchi Storia di Famiglia. The purity and clarity stood out. And the surprise punctuated the experience.

I think that we are not the only ones to be rediscovering Chianti Classico. I see that there are seven Chianti Classico wines (including Sue’s favorite from Cecchi) on this year’s Wine Spectator Top 100 list. That’s a strong showing for what is a relatively small region. Congratulations to Cecchi and the other producers for this timely recognition.

Bolgheri and the Native vs Traditional Grape Variety Debate

October 17, 2023 By in Italian wine, wine, wine history, wine markets 3 Comments

There are hundreds of native grape varietals around the world. Italy has enough for Ian D’Agata to fill two substantial volumes:  Italy’s Native Wine Grape Terroirs and Native Wine Grapes of Italy.  Sometimes I think you could spend a lifetime enjoying just Italy’s native grape wines and never reach the end of the list.

Native grape varieties are almost everywhere threatened by invaders. “International” grape varieties such as Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Sauvignon Blanc, are thought to be easier to sell than native varieties with unfamiliar names. We tend to side with the underdogs in this fight, favoring native varieties that might otherwise fade from the scene. What a loss!

But that doesn’t mean that native grapes are the end of the story. Even in Friuli, home to so many indigenous grapes, there is a third category that are often called “traditional” grape varieties, such as Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Franc, which make excellent and even distinctive wines and have been planted locally for decades. Not native, to be sure, but no longer foreign, either.

Should we favor the native grape varieties because many of them are found only in a single place? Or is that unfair to the traditional grape varieties, which may have been planted locally for generations?

(I think I remember reading that there are a few wine regions in Europe where French-American hybrid grapes, which were introduced more than 100 years ago during the Phylloxera plague, are considered part of the traditional wine culture.)

A Waste of Time?

The native versus traditional grape variety question flared up a few months ago when Sue and I met up with a press group near Lake Garda in Northern Italy. All was quiet when we visited Lugana DOC wineries. Their distinctive wines were all made from Turbiana, a local variant of the native Trebbiano grape. But then we stopped at a couple of wineries in the Garda DOC, where several traditional “international” grape varieties are approved, and things changed a bit.

“This is a waste of time,” a journalist from Northern Europe proclaimed as he stared into his glass, which contained a very nice Chardonnay. My readers don’t care about Italian Chardonnay, he said, they only want to know about what is unique to this place, the native grapes.

I didn’t think it was a waste of time because learning about nice wines is almost always a good thing, but I admit I sometimes fall into a less extreme variant of this point of view, favoring native over traditional or international much of the time. But his strong reaction made me think. The vines for this wine had been planted by the winemaker’s grandfather and had helped support three generations of his family.  That seems pretty well rooted in terroir, don’t you think?

Bordeaux in Bolgheri

I am reconsidering this question right now because Sue and I have been sampling some red wines from Bolgheri. Bolgheri is located on the Tuscan coast in the under-appreciated Maremma region. The wines are the San Felice Bell’Aja Bolgheri Superiore and Podere Sapaio Volpolo Bolgheri. Coming from Tuscany, you would imagine red wines to be Sangiovese or even a “super Tuscan” Sangiovese blend.  But the Bell’Aja is 95 percent Merlot and 5 percent Cabernet Sauvignon. The Volpolo is 70 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 15 percent each Petit Verdot and Merlot.

The wines were very different from each other (just look at the blends!) but the threads that connected them were intensity and elegance from bright acidity. If you are not familiar with Bolgheri wines, these blends will come as a surprise. How did this happen? And what should we make of them? (I won’t ask what my European journalist friend would have said!)

Bordeaux grape varieties came to the Maremma region on the Tuscan coast in the 1930s, according to Joe Bastianich’s account in his book Grandi Vini. That was about the same time that the swamps and marshes thereabouts were drained to fight malaria. Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta saw similarities with Graves in Bordeaux in terms of maritime climactic influence and rocky soil, so a small amount of Cabernet was planted. The wines were meant for family and friends only, but word spread about a unique wine from a vineyard called Sassicia.

The family finally offered a small amount of the wine for sale in 1968 and Sassicia proclaimed the first “Super Tuscan,” which took the world by storm, inspiring winemakers in Tuscany and beyond to both raise standards and experiment with exciting new blends.

What is Tradition?

Sassicia was designated a simple vino da tavola because no appellation existed in Maremma for a wine with Bordeaux grape varieties. Indeed, when a Bolgheri DOC was first established in 1983 it designated white and rosé wines only. Red wines remained vino da tavola until 1994 when the DOC was amended to accommodate the sort of wines that define it today.

Bolgheri and its Bordeaux-blend wines are famous today and the best of them are treasured and collected.  I am not sure anyone would tell Bolgheri producers that it was a mistake to embrace Cabernet when the native Sangiovese was available.

Obviously, these wines don’t rely upon native grapes, but would you call Cabernet and Merlot “traditional” grape varieties here, or is it too soon? The first wines were planted about 90 years ago, the first commercial wines were made a little over 50 years ago, and a DOC was enacted for them less than 30 years ago. Italy is a land of long tradition. Bolgheri is young by comparison. Bolgheri’s timeline in this regard is more New World than Old World.

Perhaps, as Hobsbawm argued, tradition isn’t something that exists on its own. Maybe it is something we create to suit our needs.

Italian Wine and the Paradox of Scale: Three Case Studies

July 11, 2023 By in cooperatives, Italian wine, wine, wine markets Leave a comment

Most of the world’s wine is produced by a relatively small number of very large wineries. But most wineries are very small. So wine is both big and small at once. That’s wine’s paradox of scale.

You can see the paradox at work here in the United States. According to the annual Review of the Industry issue of Wine Business Monthly (February 2023), there were 11,691 wineries in the U.S. Eighty-three percent of the wineries, however, produced fewer than 5000 cases of wine in 2022 and 49% produced 1000 cases or less.

Most of America’s wine was made by the less than half of one percent of makers in WBM’s “Top 50” list of wineries that produce at least about 300,000 cases a year. Gallo tops the list with an estimated 100 million cases, about as much as the next four producers combined (The Wine Group, Trinchero Family Estates, Delicato Family Wines, and Constellations Brands).

The situation isn’t exactly the same in other wine-producing countries but the paradox of scale still generally exists. How can small wineries compete in markets dominated by big ones? There’s no single answer to this question, so Sue and I are always very interested when visiting small wineries that seem to thrive alongside much larger and better-financed competitors. Herewith are three case studies from our recent tour of the Lugana DOC and Garda DOC regions of Northern Italy.

Location, Location, Location

Sirmione is a pretty special place, no matter how you look at it. The people are special, or at least the ones we met are. Maria Callas, the famous opera star, was born here 100 years ago. The land is special, too, flat as a pancake right on the edge of Lake Garda, with a small peninsula jutting out into it. The land, with its thick clay soil, and the lake effects mean that the wines are special. Distinctive and intense.

Four generations of the Zordan family have been farming grapes here since 1924, so their roots in this particular location run very deep. As the region has developed, however, the challenges they’ve faced go beyond the usual list of natural and market woes. The land here is terrific for wine growing, but it is also in demand for hospitality and tourism. It is a beautiful location if you are staying in the Garda region. So it was, in fact, a little bit surprising when we came upon the four-hectare vineyard and winery as we navigated through the otherwise fairly built-up streets that surround them.

The family business, Cascina Maddalena, has evolved over the years. The basic business before 1999 was selling bulk wine and that is still a source of revenue today. But it became clear that the family needed to capture more of the value added if it was to sustain the vineyards and the business through more generations. So a few hectares of the land were sold off to pay for a small but useful winery, producing about 35,000 bottles per year, and an attractive agritourism center for tastings, group events, and direct sales. “Cascina” is Italian for “farmhouse” and that’s the warm feeling you get here.

Farming grapes and making wine is hard work. Running an agritourism business is hard work, too, and the whole family pitches in to make it successful and to make the family business sustainable.

Is all the hard work worth it? From our perspective, the answer is a clear yes. The Cascina Maddalena Lugana DOC wines we tasted over lunch were stunning, displaying an intense and memorable minerality. I was especially impressed by the wines they call “Clay,” which are only produced in special vintages (we sampled 2020 and 2018). The wines spend a year on their lees in stainless steel tanks and another year in the bottle before release. Incredible.

Location in terms of both the vineyards and the winery and its hospitality facilities is key to Cascina Maddalena’s success and it is one successful strategy for smaller wineries to consider.

Sharecropper Roots

Cantina Gozzi shares some interesting similarities to Cascina Maddalena along with clear differences from it. Gozzi is also a multigenerational family winery that was founded about 100 years ago. The family were sharecroppers, working the owner’s land in return for half of the crop. This is not exactly the easy road to fortune, but it was a common practice in Northern Italy for a long time.

Somehow the Gozzi family managed to find a way to buy the land to farm for themselves as a mixed agricultural enterprise of cattle and cereals along with wine grapes. The farm is several kilometers from Lake Garda in the rolling hills closer to Mantova. The soil is different here with clay in the lower spots and more stoney and calcareous near the hilltops, the result of ancient glacial action.

It wasn’t until 1985 that the family decided to make wine the main focus, which required new investments in both vineyards and cellar facilities. Given the farm’s history, it must have been a difficult decision to give up the security of diversified production and put all the family’s eggs (I mean grapes) in one basket. But they have made it work through the sort of energy and focus that must have been necessary to buy the land in the first place. Total production is about 120,000 bottles per year.

Gozzi is in the Garda DOC zone, which means that both native and select international grape varieties are permitted. Our tasting, therefore, featured a pair of Garda DOC Chardonnay wines, one fresh and floral after a time in stainless steel tanks and the other, the Garda DOC Riserva Colombara, a richer style from a single vineyard with a year in French oak. There is also a Frizzante Chardonnay that we enjoyed at lunch at Trattoria La Pesa in Castellaro Lagusello which specializes in local cuisine (you should try the stewed donkey with polenta).

Hard work, clear focus, and a generational perspective. These are some of the qualities that impressed us at Cantina Gozzi and I even think you can taste them in the wines if you close your eyes and open your imagination.

Strength in Numbers

Cantina Colli Morenici is a cooperative winery, a type of business organization that we don’t often think about here in the United States. But cooperatives are enormously important in global wine markets, especially in Northern Italy. You may not think about cooperatives when pouring a glass of wine, but you should. You may have poured yourself a glass of wine made here, for example, although chances are that there was a different name on the front label.

Cooperatives tend to be formed in times of crisis, when winegrowers and small producers band together as a protective measure, seeking strength in numbers in the face of unfavorable market conditions. Such conditions existed in Italy in the 1950s and Cantina Colli Morenici was born in 1959.

The “strength in numbers” strategy continues to drive Italian wine to a certain extent and in 2021 Cantine di Verona was formed through a merger of Cantina Collie Morenici and two other cooperatives: Cantina Valpantena and Cantina di Custoza. Together they have three wineries providing both scale (1800 hectares of vineyards) and scope of production (a wide range of wines and styles)  for their 500+ members.

The wines are meant for everyday consumption, not cellaring and investment. The wines we tasted were good and good value. The most memorable was a limited-production Amarone from Cantina Valpantena that sold for €49 at the winery. The shop at the winery sold bottles, bag-in-box, and pumped directly into your container using a machine that looked like it would be at home in a gas station: €1.35 per liter, rosato or bianco. Yes, the wine was cheaper than gasoline.

We were told about 70 percent of production is exported, with most of the wine bound for the U.S. market destined for private label brands. That made sense to me when I tasted one particular wine and had an “ah-ha” moment. I know that wine, I thought. I’ve bought it at Trader Joe’s (or something very much like it, I’m sure) under a different label.

The future? Custoza Superiore DOC is underappreciated in the U.S. market and the winery sees potential to develop the market for this wine. Custoza is the wine region between Lake Garda and Verona and its signature wine is a blend of native varieties. A lot of potential there, I think.

Strength in numbers gives the wineries of Cantine di Verona the volume they need to support export investments and the resources to market their wines at home. We were pleasantly surprised to see an advertisement for Cantine di Verona when we were watching a bit of television at our hotel in Verona during a thundershower. It was during a Food Network Italy show featuring Italian nuns cooking traditional dishes. Cooking nuns? I’ll drink to that!

The Hedgehog & the Fox: Discovering the Wines of Lugana DOC & Garda DOC

June 27, 2023 By in Italian wine, wine, wine markets, wine tourism Leave a comment

Today’s Wine Economist is inspired by Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” The fox knows many things, Berlin wrote, drawing on an ancient Greek parable, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

People are like that, don’t you think? And there are wine regions like that too. The Lugana DOC on the shores of Lake Garda in Italy, for example, reminds me of the hedgehog, with its clear focus on one important wine. The Garda DOC, on the other hand, is home to many different ideas of wine. It is the fox.

Please read our report below and see if you agree — and which wine critter you find more appealing.

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Lake Garda in the Italian north is one of Europe’s great summer playgrounds. No wonder visitors flock there from all over Italy and from Germany and Switzerland too. There is something for everyone. The lake itself for watersports, of course, along with beaches and campgrounds, theme parks, and more. The local economy benefits from the region’s understandable popularity and so does the local wine industry. I’ll bet both were hit hard when covid restrictions put a lid on tourism. They seem to be booming now.

The Lake Effect is Strong

Wine, not theme parks, was the focus when Sue and I joined a group of journalists from Germany and Denmark for a tour co-hosted by the Lugana DOC and Garda DOC consortia. The fact that the program embraced two overlapping but very different wine regions made this an unusual adventure.

Burton Anderson acknowledged the impact of Garda tourism on the Lugana wine industry in his classic 1990 guide The Wine Atlas of Italy,

Its success has been attributed to the fact that it is white and comes from the well-frequented Garda resort of Sirmione, but the real point in its favor is its graceful personality that appeals to both novices and to people who take wine seriously.

The wines are shaped by the combination of the Turbiana grape variety, also known as Trebbiano di Lugana, plus the beneficial lake effects, and the subtle variations in vineyard geology that result from glacial activity that made this region fairly flat but far from homogeneous. The Lugana DOC wines, as I wrote a few weeks ago, balance salinity against minerality in ways that please and provoke further investigation.

A Visit to Cantina Ottella

Although restricted to just one grape variety, we found tremendous variety in the Lugana DOC wines. A memorable visit to Cantina Ottella opened our eyes to the possibilities. Ottella is a project of the Montresor family, who have been making wine here for four generations. Michele Montresor showed us the winery with its fantastic modern art collection and then we began with the wines. Picked early, the Turbiana grape variety makes sparkling wines that are justifiably popular. Picked a little later, in September, the Lugana DOC wine showed the salinity and minerality that defines it so clearly.

The next wine caught our attention. Le Creete is harvested later, in October, from old vines from a single vineyard. It was complex and even more interesting than the wine before. The Riserva was elegant, with well-integrated oak. An amphora wine dedicated to Michele’s father Ludovico came next. Stunning in its complexity. Then, finally, a Lugana DOC from the 2007 vintage, to show that Lugana can age elegantly and develop gracefully. Quite an experience. And proof, if we needed it, that Anderson was right when he said that these Lugana wines have what it takes to interest experienced wine enthusiasts even as they delight beginners.

Foxy, but in a Good Way

Cantina Ottella is famous for its Lugana wines, but they also produce wines with grapes from their vineyards in other local appellations. The evening before our visit, for example, we ordered one of their Garda DOC red wines called Campo Sireso with dinner. It was a blend of Corvina Veronese, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon from the Garda wine zone. The wine was fantastic and caught our attention.

The “fox” Garda wine zone is very different from Lugana’s “hedgehog.” Approved grape varieties for Garda include both native grapes (Cortese, Trebbiano, and Garganega whites and Corvina and Marzemino reds, for example) and international varieties, too (Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc whites and Cabernet and Merlot among others on the red side).

This means, of course, that Garda has something for everyone who comes to visit Lake Garda in the summer months and the existence of red wines is perhaps especially appealing to visitors from Northern Europe who might have a particular preference for red wines.

But Garda’s fox-like character also means that it has more trouble defining its identity in export markets, which is a shame since the wines can be very good indeed.

Sue and I were fortunate to be able to visit several wine producers who have adopted different market strategies. Come back in two weeks for these “hedgehog” and “fox” case studies. In the meantime, next week’s Wine Economist will feature a special “Independence Day” flashback column.

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Many thanks to the Lugana DOC and Garda DOC consortia for hosting us for this visit. Thanks, as well, to the wineries on our brief tour who generously gave us their time, knowledge, and very good wines! The winery list includes La Moretti, Ottella, Azienda Zenato, Cascina Maddalena, Ca” Maiol, Borgo la Cuccio, Colli Morenici, Bulgarini, and Perla del Garda. If you see wines from any of these producers on a shop shelf or wine list, please give them a try. You won’t regret it.

Pogo’s Dilemma and the Future of Prosecco Superiore

June 13, 2023 By in Italian wine, wine, wine markets 2 Comments

Pogo’s Dilemma is the theme of this week’s Wine Economist. Pogo’s Dilemma? It is a reference to Walt Kelly’s famous cartoon where the character Pogo reflects, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Sometimes life is like that, or at least it seems that way to me for the successful winegrowers in the Prosecco Superiore region.

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As last week’s Wine Economist explained, the Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG region in north-east Italy is a remarkable success story. The historic home of Prosecco in Italy (and the source of some of the finest wines today), Prosecco Superiore DOCG is in an enviable situation. Nearly every hectare of available vineyard land is planted, yields are pretty much at the maximum, and the wines sell out at attractive prices. There are not many wine regions that can compare.

By the Numbers

Here is the story by the numbers. Prosecco Superiore DOCG had 8,683 bearing hectares of grape vines in 2022, which produced a total of about 103 million bottles of wine and €634 million in revenue for the 2127 producers and growers (including seven cooperatives).

Italy is the top market for Prosecco Superiore DOCG wines, accounting for about 60 percent of sales. The top five export markets are the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the United States (Canada is next at #6).

You might be surprised to see the U.S. below Switzerland and Austria on this list. The U.S. sometimes seems to be awash with Prosecco. You see it everywhere on store shelves and restaurant lists. Surely the U.S. drinks more Prosecco than the export numbers suggest?

Prosecco vs Prosecco

Well, yes, Americans are great fans of Prosecco, but only about 3 million bottles of it are Prosecco Superiore DOCG from the Conegliano Valdobbiadene region. The rest is from the much larger Prosecco DOC zone or, like the big-selling Kirkland Signature Prosecco, from the Asolo Prosecco region. These wines can be very good and are generally less expensive. They pretty much dominate the U.S. market with many of the top-selling brands either distributed by U.S. wine companies (think Gallo’s La Marca brand) or sold under their labels. There is a Cupcake Prosecco, for example, a Barefoot Bubbly Prosecco, and now even a Prosecco from NBA star James Harden.

Prosecco DOC is ubiquitous in the U.S. market, but Prosecco Superiore DOCG can be hard to find. You really have to look for it. But the effort is worthwhile. I have organized comparative tastings of different Prosecco wines a couple of times and the Prosecco Superiore DOCG wines always make people smile and ask for more.

Prosecco DOC and DOCG wines are made with the same grape variety, Glera, using the same production techniques. The DOCG zone’s terroirs account for the wine’s distinctive qualities. It maybe isn’t a surprise that consumers who understand the difference between the wines are following the premiumization path toward Prosecco Superiore DOCG. Interestingly, producers told me, as Prosecco Superiore markets mature consumers tend to shift from the Extra Dry style that is so popular with Prosecco DOC wines to Brut and even Extra Brut Prosecco Superiore.

A Good Life (and its Discontents)

Life is good in the Conegliano Valdobbiadene region, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plans to move ahead. The goal is not so much to sell more wine (yields are maxed out) but to increase margins on the wine and generate new revenue sources through expanded wine tourism offerings. Wine tourism suffers a bit today from limited infrastructure and the nearby presence of Venice. Venice doesn’t give up her tourists once they arrive at the lagoon (day-tripping to the wine country doesn’t really happen), which makes an emphasis on destination wine tourist facilities critical.

Raising margins means raising prices and this is never easy, even for a wine like Prosecco Superiore, which seems undervalued for the quality it delivers. One part of the problem is competition, which tends to discourage price increases. The Prosecco Superiore producers compete with each other in every market, of course, and compete with other Italian sparkling wine producers for the key domestic market. Here in the U.S., sparkling wines from around the world compete with each other for room on wine shelves and space on restaurant wine lists.

The biggest competition for Prosecco Superiore wines here in America and perhaps in other export markets, too, are the generally less expensive Prosecco DOC wines. These wines are popular, heavily promoted by importers, and have consumer-pleasing quality. Prosecco Superiore’s efforts to increase price are limited, in other words, by the good value that Prosecco wines represent. And, of course, most U.S. consumers don’t really get the DOC vs DOCG thing. Prosecco is Prosecco to them.

When is Prosecco Not Prosecco?

This is where Pogo’s Dilemma (we have met the enemy and he is us) comes in. Many producers of Prosecco Superiore DOCG wines are also producers of Prosecco DOC wines (made with grapes from the DOC zone, not the DOCG zone). So, in effect, they are their own biggest competition when it comes to price increases. The better the DOC wines, the harder it is to boost DOCG prices.

The Moretti Polegato family, for example, owns Villa Sandi, a top Prosecco Superiore DOCG producer. Their wine was featured on the by-the-glass list at a top Verona restaurant we visited. But the family also owns La Gioiosa, whose DOC wines are often found on supermarket shelves. The family strategy seems to be to continue to raise the quality of all the wines rather than thinking about one versus the other and seize other opportunities that make sense, too.

For example, you can enjoy a glass of Prosecco at the Villa Sandi wine bar at the Venice airport, or have an excellent meal and perhaps spend the night at Locanda Sandi in Valdobbiadene. The Pogo effect isn’t really a problem in this case.

Smaller producers and those who focus exclusively on DOCG wines must consider different strategies. the family-run Vincenzo Toffoli, for example, produces 250,000 bottles including both Prosecco DOCG and DOC wines from their 20 hectares of vines. Although 95 percent of the wine is sparkling, the family is also exploring the region’s still wine heritage, including sweet passito wines, a delicious dry passito red Colli di Conegliano Refrontolo DOCG, and a ripasso Marzemino Veneto IGT.

The wines of Col Vetoraz are as spectacular as the tasting room view of the steep Valdobbiadene vineyards. Great wine, just don’t call it Prosecco. Prosecco, according to Col Vetoraz and several other producers, has degenerated into a generic term, defined by the big producers on the plains, which doesn’t capture the special quality of their wines. So they’ve banished Prosecco from their labels and literature. The wines they make are Valdobbiadene DOCG. Simple as that.

Refusing the Prosecco name seemed crazy to me at first, but maybe it is a reasonable response to the Pogo effect. If Prosecco is often sweetish and cheap, then maybe a drier luxury wine should have a different name, even if it is one that Americans might be afraid to pronounce. It certainly might work for some producers in their domestic market. Or at least that’s what came to mind when we were shopping for Prosecco Superiore DOCG wines at a big shop in Verona. You can see how the wine display was labeled in the photo.

Sue and I were impressed with the creativity and innovation we encountered during our visit to Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG. It is a magical wine from a magical place and the magical people who make it are bound to find solutions to Pogo’s Dilemma.