While some of us will welcome the New Year with glasses full of Champaign, others will sip on Prosecco and third will celebrate with some sparkling white wine without been fully aware what exactly are drinking.
Many think that the Italian white wine Prosecco is a sparkling one, by definition, but this is only partially true. As there is, indeed, the most famous and popular variety, the sparkling Prosecco DOC, but there are also a semi-sparkling Frizzante and a non-sparkling, still Tranquillo; all made from the Glera grapes.
And when comes to the sweetness of the Prosecco, depending on the quality of sugar per litre, it is labelled as Brut (up to 12 grams per litre of residual sugar), “Extra Dry” (12–17 g/l) or “Dry” (17–32 g/l).
Ancient records trace the Prosecco to the Pucinum or Pucino wine of the Roman Empire.
Pliny the Elder, the famous Roman writer, describes it as one of the great wines at the tables of Roman dignitaries, which they highly praised and believed drinking it can give them a longer life.
This wine was made of Glera grapes, which initially grew near the village of Prosecco on the Karst hills above Trieste, which was then known as Puccino.
The first known mention of the name Prosecco is attributed to the Englishman Fynes Moryson, who, visiting the north of Italy in 1593, placed it among the famous local wines: “Here growes the wine Pucinum, now called Prosecho, much celebrated by Pliny.”
In the 18th century, cultivation of Glera grapes expanded around the region to later spread to the neighbouring lower lying areas of Veneto and Friuli. And this is where the Prosecco, we know today, was first produced when in 1868, the winemaker and chemist Antonio Carpené began to make Prosecco in large tanks instead of allowing the fermentations to occur in bottles.
The first time the British readers got to read about the white wine from the Veneto region was back in 1866, in a November issue of The Times: “Two varieties of white wine, Verdiso and Prosecco, and one red, the Roboso, not entirely unlike the white and red wines of the more northerly vineyards of France. “
Prosecco is gaining popularity in the last couple of years, with exports to nearly 100 countries, including the United Kingdom which imports jump from 38 million in 2013 to 57 million euros in 2014, and the United States with a growth rate of 28.4% for the same period.
