Collection: Franciacorta DOCG

Franciacorta DOCG is Italy's answer to high-class bottle-fermented sparkling wine. The appellation lies in Lombardiet between Bergamo and Brescia, centred on the municipality of Rovato, on the shores of Lake Iseo in the central part of the region. The name derives from the Latin 'franchae curtes', which denoted tax-exempt monastic districts, and it first appears in the city statutes of Brescia in 1277. Here only sparkling wine is made according to méthode champenoise, the traditional method in which the first fermentation takes place in tank or barrel, while the decisive second fermentation always takes place in the bottle itself, with the wine resting on the lees.

Chardonnay is the dominant grape and covers more than two thirds of the planted area. Pinot Nero and Pinot Bianco are permitted as secondary grapes. The climate is cooler than in the surrounding areas, because the region sits in a kind of natural amphitheatre. Lake Iseo has a moderating effect on the temperature, and Monte Orfano shields Franciacorta from the Po plain and contributes to the cool conditions. The soils consist of silty, stony glacial moraine from the Ice Age, which slows the ripening of the grapes and differs from the heavier, more clayey and alluvial deposits out on the plain.

Serious production of sparkling wine took off in the 1960s, when wines in the champagne style were created based on, among others, Pinot Nero. Most of the large producers arrived in the last two decades of the 1900s, many financed by wealthy industrialists from Brescia. Yields are strictly regulated. Non-vintage cuvées must age at least eighteen months in the bottle before release, while vintage wines require at least thirty months.

On the label you will encounter designations such as Extra Brut, Brut, Extra Dry, Sec and Demi-Sec according to the residual sugar content. Satèn is a style made like a crémant with lower pressure and exclusively from white grapes, while Pas Dosé denotes entirely undosed, bone-dry wines. Note that the word 'spumante' may not appear on a Franciacorta label. If you want to explore Lombardiet more closely or delve into Chardonnay in a sparkling form with weight and finesse, this is where you should look.