Obviously, there’s a lot of verbiage in the way this wine is formally designated, but the key term for those who don’t yet know the wine is “Asciutto,” a local synonym for “Dry.” This means that the wine is, in sensory terms, sweet. (Don’t kill the messenger…I’m not responsible for this sort of counter-intuitive labeling.) The next thing to know about the wine is that it is sourced from the super-steep slopes of a compact, amphitheater-like vineyard that produces fruit with great ripeness but also fresh acidity. When visiting the producer, I tasted three vintages of this side-by-side, with the other two being the releases from 2015 and 2013. The intention was to show that sweeter renditions of Prosecco Superiore can age well in bottle, and the point was proved quite effectively by the tasting. The 2013 was losing some effervescent energy but was still quite delicious in its more Frizzante style; the 2015 was fantastic and the best of the three, with the fruit receding just enough to bring a saline minerality to the fore. As for this 2017, well, my raw note from the tasting described it as a, “magic carpet ride of foamy, delicious fun.” I’ll leave it at that. Have a cold glass after dinner some night this summer, and you’ll be hooked.
Adami, Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG (Veneto, Italy) Glera 2017
By Michael Franz
