![]() Its purity, he said, had been contaminated by Aperol and Campari and the cloying Jolly Rancher-colored Spritzes that have conquered aperitive-hour the world over. Bortolomiol believes there is not much left in that name. But most consumers don’t know the difference they just look for the name Prosecco.Īnd Mr. The old hills get an extra G - for Guaranteed origin. The traditional hills get a brown seal nine new provinces where the wine is made get a blue one. Over the decades, Italy has given different protected geographical indications for different bottles of Prosecco depending on where they are produced. Bortolomiol added as a fellow knight in red robes nodded gravely. “We are trying to put the name Prosecco in the background,” Mr. With his back to dusty bottles of the hill’s best spumante through the decades, he sat with tented hands on an elevated seat and argued that the good name of Prosecco had been irrevocably sullied by overproduction on the mechanically harvested and viticulturally uninteresting provinces that accounted for 500 million of the 600 million bottles on the market. Around him, frescoes depicted the society’s four founding fathers knocking some chalices back with giddy medieval knights, a topless Bacchus and women in slinky togas. Bortolomiol, 55, wore a heavy white fustian cloak, black velvet cap and a gold medallion embossed with the brotherhood’s coat of arms. The grandmaster of the Confraternity of Valdobbiadene - a hallowed society of Prosecco makers from the wine’s traditional home on the Valdobbiadene and Conegliano hills - Mr. Bortolomiol’s first cousin - argued that the conflict over the Croatian wine presented a rare chance to advance a radical agenda: The time had come to ditch the name Prosecco. In a dark and vaulted cellar under a stone Prosecco museum on the Valdobbiadene hillside, Enrico Bortolomiol - Ms. ![]() “The important thing is to have an enemy,” he said. drug bust, he put seized Romanian “Pro-Secco,” a 10-pack of glitter “Prosecco Bath Bombs” and Prosecco Princess Shower Gel on the table of his headquarters. “Recognizing Prosek could legitimize a ton of other products that are imitations,” said Luca Giavi, the president of the Consortium to Protect Prosecco.Īs if demonstrating the yield of a D.E.A. The argument is that recognition by Brussels would confuse consumers and set a dangerous precedent. allowed Prosek today, producers argue, could Farmesan be far behind?Īnd so Prosecco producers and local officials have joined Italy’s government to crush Prosek. member state, presented a unique threat.Ī significant slice of the Italian economy is built on typically Italian products with names, and sounds, protected from imitation. But tiny Prosek, a legitimately old wine from an E.U. The European Union, in a major buzz kill for a Spritz-fueled multibillion euro industry, last month agreed to consider a longstanding application by Croatia to recognize Prosek, a method of making an obscure sweet - and still - dessert wine of the same name.īig Prosecco has fought off myriad other salvos - counterfeits like Meer-secco and Cansecco, and the warnings of British dentists about sugary spumante rotting the country’s teeth. War and internal strife have come to Prosecco country. Bortolomiol said a surprise attack had “disoriented us.” An owner of the Bortolomiol winery and new president of a consortium of producers, Ms. “I feel like I’m going to battle,” said Elvira Maria Bortolomiol as she pantomimed carrying a rifle in an airy tasting room next to her vineyards. Couples clinked glasses in the town’s quaint Prosecco bars.īut behind the effervescent front, producers of Italy’s wildly popular sparkling white wine in the northeastern Veneto region were on war footing. Workers harvesting in the terraced vineyards squinted in the sun. Small pickup trucks carrying mounds of green grapes wound through Prosecco Road. But they also can’t agree on what, exactly, should be called Prosecco. A Battle of the Bubbles: War Comes to the Prosecco HillsĪ Croatian wine, Prosek, seeks an official designation, and Prosecco makers are up in arms.
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