I have to amend what I stated in the article Rosè or not Rosè: on 16/12/2019, I wrote: “…for now there is no prosecco rosé (apart from the hyperspace of scams against Italian agri-food products around the world)”. Well, that’s no longer true; now you can produce it, you can label a bottle with the name Prosecco Rosè. The Prosecco Consortium has drawn up a Book of Rules: https://www.prosecco.wine/en/node/743 https://prosecco-wine.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/inline-files/Prosecco_Indicazioni%20tecniche%20tipologia%20ros%C3%A9.pdf
https://www.prosecco.wine/en/node/743
Vademecum per la gestione documentale dei prodotti
These rules determine how it must be done; it also states the parameters necessary to have the denomination approved to be labeled Prosecco Rosè. For those who are dying to read agricultural policies, here is another interesting article: https://www.politicheagricole.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/IT/IDPagina/16153
https://www.politicheagricole.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/IT/IDPagina/16153
Ok. Very good. But I chose not to sell it; I will use my right to decide what to represent despite what the general public asks for; hence Prosecco Rosè will not be featured here at proseccoshoppe.com. I love rosé wines very much; every day, I work toward expanding the range of quality rosé wines in my shop; soon, I will have some new, exciting, excellent ones. A rosè needs to kick my socks off to be chosen: Prosecco Rosè did not even come close to interest me. Needless to say that I have not tried all the available ones on the market, so I do not wish to venture into the merits of the wine itself; I will however address the “philosophy” aspect of prosecco rosé production. Rosé wines are delicate wines, lately victims of great prejudices, unfortunately often founded, thanks to being subject to several frauds (https://nclnet.org/fraud_in_wine_industry/). It is easy to create a pretty pink color and bottle it up, thus generating countless scams, and ultimately hurt the real rosè wines. However, if you can unravel in the forest of pink wines, the market offers some wonderful rosè; the typical, banal generalization calls for the equation that rosè needs to be French, whereas Italy produces fantastic pinks. Having said that, I am not particularly convinced that prosecco lends itself to this declination in pink. The first fundamental aspect to keep well in mind is that it is obtained through a mix of Prosecco Doc Treviso, the commonly known “low land” prosecco, and Pinot Noir: the base (85%) is not DOCG Conegliano Valdobbiadene. The Book of Rules itself specifies that it has to be made with Prosecco Doc Treviso. Hence, the wineries producing it are necessarily different from the small DOCG productions I market. Through the sale of its selected wines, this shop endeavors to narrate the story of small, passionate producers. Welcome to the valley of wine and purpose, says my home page: Apart from Montelliana, a large consortium winery that produces large volumes, the other wineries represented here are all small and medium productions. These wineries are businesses owned by people I know personally; I meet these people, walk their land when I go to buy their wine, and invite me into their homes. They are all located in places quite difficult to reach, along winding country roads, the ones where you need to pull to the side to let the opposite car pass. Usually it is a small tractor, so you really need to pull up the steep side to let him through! Above all, they are all wineries of what are known as viticoltori di pendio, hillside winemakers. The vineyards of Santo Stefano or Saccol are oh! so very steep: so dizzyingly steep that every time I wonder how it came to these people to plant vines up there. Mixing DOCG obtained from vineyards so challenging to work with Pinot Noir produced elsewhere (no room in Valdobbiadene for other vines!) is unthinkable for producers like the small realities I represent. Inevitably, writing about the place, my mind wanders toward the people I know: behind the bottles I sell, there are people like Ruggero, the owner of Ruge, who always welcomes me with a smile, we talk about dogs as we load his wines in my dirty jeep, the necessary vehicle to reach his winery, perched on top of the vineyard. Or Michele of Bastìa who binds his vineyards one by one with willow branches he carries tied up around his waist; I holler hellos from the ledge down to him, as he works in his vertical rows of vines, a hill more apt to extreme sports than to agriculture. Well, I can’t say precisely why, but for me, millions of mass produced rosé prosecco and these people have really nothing in common.
