Asolo Prosecco, Elegance in a Glass

“Asolo Prosecco. It’s a completely different story,” goes the ad from the Asolo Consortium.

That’s true. Among top-of-the-line Proseccos, Asolo is a different territory — close to but separate from its more famous neighbor, Valdobbiadene-Conegliano — with a different history and different soils. But as one of only two Prosecco DOCGs, it’s little known.

That’s partly due to the fact that it was elevated to DOCG status relatively recently, in 2009. And despite its phenomenal growth since then, production is still dwarfed by its bigger, more famous brother. In 2021, bottles of Asolo Prosecco numbered close to 20 million. Valdobbiadene-Conegliano is five times that, at 100 million bottles. But both pale in comparison to the entry-level Prosecco DOC (560 million), which most people drink. The DOC comes from a far wider territory, which includes the flat plains, whereas both DOCGs come from steep hills, which makes a huge difference.

prosecco Doc (in tan) vs docg (in color).

But Asolo’s obscurity is also due to its being largely ignored by the press when the topic comes to Prosecco Superiore. On a recent Wine Spectator online tutorial called “The ABCs of Prosecco Superiore,” Asolo wasn’t mentioned once, other than being shown on a map of Prosecco land as a whole. And that’s par for the course.

It reminds me of Chicago’s second-city syndrome. When I lived there, I worked in the art world, and New York City was the epicenter of the action. Chicago artists felt overlooked by collectors, dealers, and the art press, and gallery owners became furious if an artist decided to throw in the towel on Chicago and make the move to New York. Whaddya bet that winemakers in Asolo feel the same way about Valdobbiadene-Conegliano sucking up all the oxygen in the room.

The thing is, they make lovely wine. I had the chance to taste a few bottles of Asolo Prosecco on a Zoom webinar presented by the consortium (from Bedin, Bele Casel, Giusti, La Gioiosa, Perlage, and Tenuta Baron, to be specific). I found them all quite elegant and complex, with superfine bubbles. The appellation’s rules say that the wine should show “citrus notes (lemon, citron), fine and delicate honey notes, aromas of ripe apple and white flowers.” There’s also the characteristic green apple notes of the glera grape, which by law makes up at least 85 percent of the wine.

The line-up from the consortium. Photo © patricia Thomson

Like Proseccos everywhere, most Asolo Proseccos have their bubbles made in autoclave, using the Charmat method, or more properly, the Martinotti method. (Martinotti, after all, came up with the technique first and the Frenchman copied it later.)

Forbes writer Susan Gordon, who gave the Zoom presentation, did a good job explaining why glera does better in autoclave than with secondary fermentation in the bottle. “Why doesn’t the champagne method work in these hills?” Gordon asks rhetorically. “It doesn’t work because you have grapes here that are very delicate and very complex, but in a subtle way. Floral and beautiful fruited notes, there’s a lot of ginger in some of them and lemongrass. So the idea is, we don’t want to cover that up or complicate that with winemaking. So if you make them champagne style, you start to get secondary wine characteristics, like those bready or yeast notes.” In other words, glera can be done champagne style, but you lose a lot of primary fruit, which is its charm.

Asolo — like Prosecco as a whole — is enjoying an explosion in growth, particularly in the U.S., which consumes 55–60 percent of Asolo’s production. (Italians drink 30 percent.) Measured in hectoliters, production between 2014 and 2020 has climbed year by year: 22k, 39k, 58k, 95k, 128k, 140k.

Like all sparkling wines, there are levels of sweetness. The most traditional Asolo remains the most popular: Extra Dry. Extra Dry is considered medium-dry and contains a healthy dose of residual sugar: 12–17 grams per liter (g/l). Consumers love a bit of residual sugar, which adds to the wine’s fruity character. Extra Dry makes up almost three-quarters of production.

Next in line of dryness is Brut, which is drier than Extra Dry at 0–12 g/l and makes up 18% of production. (I know, it’s counterintuitive, but you just have to memorize the sweetness scale.) Most Bruts don’t go all the way down to 0. That’s reserved for a new typology (as of 2014) called Extra Brut, which is between 0–6 g/l. The name is intended to drive home its bone dryness. I’m in the minority who prefer this style, which accounts for only 2.5% of production. I’m happy to say that’s growing.

Maybe I’ll load up on it when I visit Asolo, which I’m hoping to do this spring. Judging from the pictures, it’s a lovely town. And knowing that Titian learned a lot about light from visiting this place is reason enough for this former art historian to go. Plus, there’s all the elegant Asolo Prosecco that awaits.

Winter pruning in Asolo. photo courtesy asolo consortium