If you don’t believe, or more likely just don’t plain realize that Prosecco wine is imbued (or rather, can be imbued) of terroir, then think again. And get to know Masottina, that with its two different R.D.O. Proseccos is arguably the best producer of Prosecco Superiore wines made with grapes from the Conegliano section of the Valdobbiadene-Conegliano DOCG. (That same Valdobbiadene-Conegliano area that in 2019 was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, given its unique beauty.)

Historically, everyone making wine in the Conegliano and Valdobbiadene usually blended the grapes from the territories of the two communes (clearly, only if they owned vineyards in the two different sections of the DOCG area or could afford to buy those from the area they didn’t have vines in). This was more than savvy, given that it allowed to make wines that combined the floral and citrussy acid elements of Valdobbiadene’s limestone-rich soils with the structure and power derived from Conegliano’s clay-rich soils. Keep in mind that all the Prosecco wines made from the territories of these two communes, when made by competent producers, are potential standouts, and they literally blow out of the water all those oceans of indusrial, insipid, thin, tart Prosecoo wines that are a shame to the wine and denomination’s name. After all, it’s not by chance that Prosecco DOCG is also known as Prosecco Superiore, one of the very few instances in Italian wine you’ll find that descriptor, ‘Superiore’, actually means something. It tells you that the Prosecco you are drinking is made with grapes grown in the territories of only fifteen (15) communes, and not from that of 556 communes dispersed over nine provinces like it is with generically labeled Prosecco wines. (For comparison’s sake, be aware that the DOCG produces about 90 million bottles of Prosecco a year, compared to the roughly 660 million of the DOC.) And so, seeing the word ‘Superiore’ on Prosecco wine labels is actually helpful to wine lovers and potential wine buyers. Clearly, the producer then has to have the talent to actually come up with something good from his vineyards: and that is precisely the case with Masottina. And when you drink a Prosecco Superiore from Masottina’s Rive di Ogliano vineyard area, located in Conegliano’s territory, you realize immediately how different it is from a Prosecco Superiore wine made by the likes of equally talented folks such as Silvano Follador and Ruggeri over in Valdobbiadene.

Because there really is terroir at work in weaving the magical fibre of which a great Prosecco Superiore is made of.