W. Blake Gray · Tuesday, 17-Sep-2024
Prosecco is one of the hottest wines on the world market because it’s an easy pleasure. In fact, if a winery puts too much effort into it, it might remove the name “Prosecco” from the label.
That’s the case for Col Vetoraz, which first took Prosecco off its label in 2007, restored it in 2009 when Prosecco Superiore was granted DOCG status, and removed it again in 2017 because the owners don’t believe “Prosecco Superiore” is a mark of quality. Thus Col Vetoraz’s labels now show only Valdobbiadene DOCG.
“It’s not easy to avoid the word Prosecco from here,” said Loris Dall’Acqua, Col Vetoraz’ CEO and winemaker. And no wonder. No matter what they call the wine, it’s going to lumped into the Prosecco section of the wine list, as it should be. The goal becomes to be the best wine in that section. That’s actually a bit easier to achieve.
Col Vetoraz was founded in 1993 as a project between winemaker Dall’Acqua and agronomist Paolo de Bortoli, both of whom wanted to take the region’s grapes more seriously than their neighbors.
The effort that Col Vetoraz puts into its 100,000 annual cases of Pro … excuse me, Valdobbiadene DOCG … is unusual in the region. The winery sources grapes from 102 different vineyards, and ferments the grapes from each separately. Keeping some vineyard blocks separate gives the winery 122 different batches of grapes each year. They use only whole clusters and press each batch twice: once gently, which they keep; the second time more roughly, which they sell. Col Vetoraz sells off about 35 percent of the base wine it makes to other producers.
Col Vetoraz does not make any single-vineyard or single-village (“rive”) wines, though it could. Dall’Acqua said he learned from a visit to Champagne that it’s best to have grapes from different parts of the region, in case climate change creates more problems in one area.
Like every Prosecco, the wine is carbonated in tanks by the Charmat method rather than by secondary fermentation in the bottle, as in Champagne. But somewhat unusually, the wine is not fined or clarified because they want to keep colloidal proteins in the wine to make a creamy, less aggressive mousse of bubbles.
Col Vetoraz staged a vertical tasting of its vintage Brut wines for my visit, and that was fascinating, because we rarely have an opportunity to taste aged Prosecco. I don’t know that it can age as long as Champagne, but one thing that struck me was that the elegant bubbles of the 2007 and 2009 wines could pass for traditional method. Who sits on a Prosecco for 15 years? Yet these wines show that doing so might pay off.
Aging gracefully
Young Col Vetoraz Brut wines have a nice character of floral notes and apricot, with somewhat aggressive bubbles. The finish starts to get a little salty after nine years, and that increases with more age, in a good way. Floral aromas disappear after about 14 years, and you start to taste as much hazelnut as fruit. I don’t know when the improvements stop and the wine starts to die, but the 2007 is still excellent 17 years later.
Col Vetoraz Brut, with a moderate 8 grams of residual sugar, is the main version exported to the US right now, and it’s easy to see why: the current release has the character that fans of the region seek, with none of the off notes that can plague cheaper wines. In Italy, the winery’s top seller is, somewhat surprisingly, its Millesimato Dry. “Dry,” in the opposites-language of sparkling wines, is the sweetest, with 24 grams of RS. And Dry was also the winery’s number one product in its top export market: Russia, known for its sweet tooth in bubblies.
And now I know why! I’m burying the lead here for caviar fans. We also did a tasting of caviars with Col Vetoraz wines that was intended to complicate our lives, as these wine-and-food-pairing tastings usually do, by saying: “You should drink Extra Dry with this kind of fish eggs and Brut with that kind.”
But in fact, regardless of the type of fish eggs, the best pairing – and one of the best caviar pairings I’ve ever had – was Col Vetoraz Cartizze. I don’t love vodka or most wines with caviar; given the choice, I usually have sake, which is meant to go with fishy flavors. Col Vetoraz Cartizze is better with caviar than most Champagne. There are two good reasons for this.
First, Cartizze is the hilly 108-acre area – somewhat coincidentally right in front of the Col Vetoraz winery – where the most expensive Prosecco grapes are grown. It’s steep and cool, with limestone soils that give Cartizze wines more minerality. But the downside for me personally is that most Cartizze wines are made very sweet. Col Vetoraz’s wines are no exception: their Cartizze has 24 grams of residual sugar, like their Dry. Cartizze wines cost more than Champagne and I don’t usually find them as interesting.
With caviar though, the sweetness of the Cartizze contrasts perfectly with the saltiness of fish eggs, which also amplify the wine’s minerality. Now I understand Russian tastes in sparkling wine much better. I’d drink more Cartizze too, if only I had a steady stream of caviar. If only.
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