"Having crossed a gorge between wooded ridges and fields where the vine has spread a network of leafy garlands, we looked out over a vast, verdant basin. See how fertile, lively, and joyful my Franciacorta is!" Like Tullio Dandolo, many writers have celebrated the gentle hills of Franciacorta, a lush and happy haven where time becomes an ally and accomplice of the sparkling wine par excellence.
A bit of geography
The vine, always present in this territory since time immemorial, sinks its roots to the east in rocky hills, then rises northward along the basin of Lago D'Iseo, to then occupy the final extension of the Alpi Retiche. The river Oglio also separates this important territory from the province of Bergamo, a morainic territory that formed during the glacial period thanks to a great glacier which, as it split, gave rise to a considerable western and eastern morainic arc. Other factors such as the hilly terrain that facilitates vine drainage and the gravelly, alluvial, and calcareous soil make the fortune of this territory with a capital F, ideal for the development of a particular microclimate that favors grape varieties suited to the production of the Metodo Classico. Such a lush landscape of flora and fauna led prehistoric nomadic populations to settle there and cultivate the vine, as archaeological finds dating back to the Bronze Age have subsequently demonstrated.
A bit of history
In Roman times, more deeply rooted cultivation techniques developed, only for everything to be lost due to the Lombard invasions once the Roman Empire declined. The rebirth, as also happened in other Italian regions, came with the spread of monastic agriculture and land reclamation in the early Middle Ages, and it is perhaps in this period that the origin of the name Franciacorta was born. Some theories trace the etymology of the word to "curtes francae," meaning those small villages that were exempted from paying taxes. To begin talking about quality, however, we must make a quick leap to around the end of the sixteenth century, when contact with French oenology improved wine production and conservation on multiple fronts. Quality, over the centuries, thanks to studies and in-depth research, could only continue to improve, especially with the advent of the eighteenth century, when new training and pruning systems were also experimented with.
Finally some wine: the entrepreneurial turning point
A thousand-year-old history that thus reaches a decisive turning point at the end of the 1950s with the birth of the awareness of being able to produce a product "in the French manner." Many industrialists at the time were involved with the lands of Franciacorta, including Guido Berlucchi, who for the production of his wines relied on the skilled oenologist Ziliani. Ziliani's formidable intuition was precisely to quickly understand that Franciacorta was the Italian territory suited for introducing grape varieties dedicated to the production of bubbles and that Pinot (but in reality it was Chardonnay) was well-suited to this method. The countless difficulties encountered in an Italy still inexperienced, also due to often inadequate equipment, made the path of Franciacorta arduous but not impossible, as in 1961 the first bottles of "Pinot di Franciacorta méthode champenoise" were finally born. Thus this Lombard territorial area, once a land of red wines, became today's finest producer of Italian sparkling wine according to the Metodo Classico. Thanks to constant and serious work driven by a passion for wine, in '67 the DOC recognition arrived, which would later become DOCG in 1995.
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