Farra di Soligo, Veneto, Italy

© Olimpio Fantuz/Sime/eStock Phot

Info. Farra di Soligo in the Prosecco hills of Veneto, Italy

It’s autumn here in the Prosecco hills of north-east Italy. We’re just outside Farra di Soligo, a village about 60 kilometres north of Venice. This area is known for growing the Glera grape used to make the white wine called Prosecco. Once a humble sparkling wine, Prosecco now exceeds Champagne in global popularity. More than 600 million bottles of Prosecco were produced in Italy in 2018, about twice the amount of Champagne sold around the world.

Of those 600 million bottles produced a year, about 90 million bottles of Prosecco come from the Prosecco hills region. Like most Italian grape-growing areas, the Prosecco hills boast a spectacular landscape. Small plots of grapes have grown on narrow grassy terraces known as ‘ciglioni’ since the 17th century. From above, the ciglioni produce a chequerboard effect with vines growing both horizontally along and vertical to the hillsides. Some plots even use the 19th-century ‘bellussera’ technique of training the grapevines to grow up along trees. This region was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2019.