What is Prosecco wine?

Prosecco is Italy's most famous sparkling wine, made from the Glera grape, chiefly in the Veneto and Friuli. Unlike Champagne, its bubbles come from a second fermentation in a pressurised tank rather than in the bottle, which keeps the wine fresh, floral and fruity — apple, pear, white blossom. Most Prosecco is everyday flat-land DOC, but the best comes from the steep hills between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, a landscape so distinctive that UNESCO listed it.

What's the difference between Prosecco DOC and Conegliano Valdobbiadene?

It's the single most useful thing to know about Prosecco. Prosecco DOC is the huge zone across the plains of Veneto and Friuli — the supermarket bottling, pleasant and cheap. Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore is the historic hill zone north of Treviso, where the vines cling to near-vertical slopes worked by hand. The hill wine has more perfume, more depth and more precision. Spending a euro or two more to trade up from DOC to the hills is the easiest upgrade in Italian wine.

What do Rive, Cartizze and col fondo mean on a Prosecco label?

They're the insider tiers. Rive are single-hillside crus within the Conegliano-Valdobbiadene zone — the label names the specific steep slope the fruit came from. Cartizze is the grand cru, a small, prized hill in Valdobbiadene that makes the most sought-after bottlings. Col fondo (or sur lie) is the old-fashioned style refermented in the bottle and left cloudy on its lees — drier, yeastier and more characterful than mainstream Prosecco. Any of the three signals a step up from the everyday.

Is Prosecco sweet or dry, and why is 'Extra Dry' confusing?

Here's the trap: on a Prosecco label, Extra Dry is actually sweeter than Brut. The scale runs (driest to sweetest) Brut Nature, Extra Brut, Brut, Extra Dry, Dry — so 'Dry' is the sweetest of all. Brut is the modern default and the safest bet if you want it crisp. Extra Dry, slightly softer and fruitier, is the traditional Prosecco style and lovely with food. Read the term, not your instinct about the word 'dry.'

Prosecco: Conegliano & Valdobbiadene

Bardolino taught the region to relax. Prosecco is where it learned to sparkle — and where, if you're paying attention, it gets a lot more interesting than the brunch-table cliché suggests. Because there are two Proseccos, and the gap between them is the whole story. One is the cheap fizz you already know. The other clings to hillsides so steep and beautiful that UNESCO put a ring around them. This part is about telling them apart.

Two Proseccos

Say "Prosecco" and most people picture a magnum on ice at a party — pleasant, cheap, forgettable. That's Prosecco DOC: an enormous zone sprawling across the plains of Veneto and Friuli, made in bulk, priced to move. Nothing wrong with it for a spritz. But it's the floor, not the ceiling.

The ceiling is up in the hills north of Treviso, between the towns of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, where the land crumples into a run of impossibly steep ridges. Here the wine is Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore, and it's a genuine step up — more perfume, more texture, more precision, made from vines hand-worked on slopes too sheer for any machine. The neighbouring Asolo hills make a third, quieter case for hillside Prosecco.

The upgrade from flat-land DOC to the hills costs a euro or two. It's the best-value trade-up in Italian wine, and once you've tasted it you won't go back.

The grape, and why it fizzes the way it does

Prosecco is made from Glera, a grape so tied to the wine that it was called Prosecco until the name got reserved for the bottle in 2009. Glera gives light, aromatic wine — green apple, pear, white blossom, a touch of citrus — built for freshness, not for age.

And the bubbles arrive differently than in Champagne. Prosecco's second fermentation happens in a pressurised tank, not the bottle — the tank (Charmat) method — which locks in Glera's fruit and flower rather than trading them for the bready, autolytic notes of bottle ageing. That's not a shortcut so much as a different goal: Prosecco is meant to taste of orchard and hillside, fresh and immediate. It's why it and Champagne's Italian rival Franciacorta pull in opposite directions — one bottle-fermented and toasty, the other tank-fresh and floral.

Prosecco isn't failed Champagne. It's a wine built to taste of the orchard, not the bakery — and the good stuff, off the steep hills, does it thrillingly.

The words that unlock the good bottles

Three label terms take you from party fizz to serious wine.

Rive are the single-hillside crus of the Conegliano-Valdobbiadene zone — a Rive on the label names the specific steep slope the fruit came from, the sparkling equivalent of a named vineyard. Cartizze is the grand cru: a small, coveted hill above Valdobbiadene that makes the most concentrated and expensive Prosecco of all. And col fondo (or sur lie) is the old artisan style — refermented in the bottle, left cloudy and unfiltered on its lees, drier and yeastier and far more characterful than the mainstream. Any of the three is a signal that someone took this seriously.

The Extra Dry trap

Now the one thing that trips up nearly everyone. On a Prosecco label, the sweetness scale is counter-intuitive. From driest to sweetest it runs: Brut Nature, Extra Brut, Brut, Extra Dry, Dry. Which means Extra Dry is sweeter than Brut, and "Dry" is the sweetest of the lot.

So: want it crisp and modern? Buy Brut. Want the softer, fruitier, traditional Prosecco style that flatters food and the apéritivo hour? Extra Dry is your bottle — and it's how much of the classic hillside Prosecco is made. Read the term on the label, not the everyday meaning of the word "dry," and you'll never be surprised again.

Where to drink it at the source

Give the Prosecco hills their own day — this is a separate world from Verona and the lake, an hour north of Venice, and it deserves better than an afterthought. The Venice-to-Prosecco-hills day trip is the natural way in, and the Strada del Prosecco — reckoned Italy's first official wine road — threads the ridgeline of the UNESCO landscape past cellar after cellar. It's one of the prettiest drives in the north; take it slowly, and nominate a driver.

For the benchmark, book Nino Franco in Valdobbiadene — the house that made Prosecco a serious wine, a century deep on the steepest hills, the Glera reference everyone else is measured against. Around it, the family cantine of Valdobbiadene and Conegliano pour Rive, Cartizze and col fondo for anyone who books ahead. Go up in spring, when the hills are green and the slopes are impossibly photogenic.

You've now met the whole Veneto range — the ladder of dried-grape reds, the sweet Reciotos, mineral Soave, the easy lake wines, and hillside Prosecco done right. Which raises the only question left: whose cellar do you actually knock on? The region's houses are wildly different animals, from obsessive Amarone shrines to century-old Prosecco estates, and getting into the right ones is the difference between a good trip and a great one. Part 8 names the ones to book.