…where Pinot Noir and Chardonnay “sparkle” Italian

Franciacorta is the best kept wine’s Italian secret. A small area of just 240 KM² enclosed by the city of Brescia, the Iseo lake, the northern lands of the Padana plane and the rivers Mella and Oglio. The landscape is beautifully spotted with vineyards and olive trees. Rows of cypresses follow your driving on the stretched hilled roads discovering the small, medieval municipalities that constitute the urban soul of these lands.  Here the cold winters are mitigated by the influence of the lake and the hot summers refreshed by the breeze puffing south from the close Valcamonica valley, creating favourable Mediterranean conditions for the making of the modern “Franciacorta DOCG”.

Wine is made here since Pliny the Elder, but it was only in 1961, when Guido Berlucchi, Franco Ziliani and Giorgio Lanciani bottled the first 3000 bottle of their “metodo classico”, that Franciacorta begun to be known to the most.

Just the time to drop off the suitcases and we are back on the road with destination to Guido Berlucchi Winery, the first and foremost wine maker in Franciacorta.

Registration, check in and in few steps we found ourselves 40 feet underground surrounded by continuing rows of resting bottles. The absence of light, the humidity and the natural 16 degrees Celsius give us a relief from one the hottest Italian summer in the last 100 years.

The Franciacorta D.O.C.G is one of the strictest Italian denomination of origin and the code of rules imposes all aspects of the winemaking: from the variety of grapes to the concentration of vines per hectare, to the aging periods and fermentation processes. Strict code of rules that brought the Franciacorta DOCG to be the most appreciated and consumed sparkling wine in Italy.

 

Only selected vineyards provide the selection of grapes used by the wine makers; the clusters are hand picked and brought to the estate in small cases where giant custom-build presses gently crush them.  The wine flows in stainless steel or concrete vats for the first fermentation. Then the bottling and the second fermentation where the wines rest “sur lie” (in contact with the yeasts) for a minimum of 18 months for non-vintage wines, 24 months for rosé and satin, 30 months for the vintage “millesimato” and 60 months for the wines marked “riserva”.

Tasting notes here

A secret not much undisclosed anymore; the production of Franciacorta is largely consumed by the Italian market and the 20% that “escape” from the Italian celebrations lands mostly on Japanese and Swiss tables; almost 23% of all the exports of 2016 was sold in the “land of the rising sun”, followed by the Swiss 17% in the same year.  Numbers that are destined to rise thanks to the festivals that the “Consorzio per la tutela del Franciacorta” organizes every year with editions in Italy and worldwide, giving the deserved recognition to the work of hundreds of families that bring to life this small Pearl of the Italian wines’ scenario.

We love sparkling wines: Champagne, Prosecco, Franciacorta, Cremant and all the rest of them.  Are you passionate about bubbles too? Let us know why (or why not!).