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Home > Focus On
Vineyards of Franciacorta
 Roma - (Adnkronos Multimedia) - During the Fifties, in many of the little villages located between the cities of Brescia and Lake Iseo, choice was limited if you wanted to write: only very basic and anonymous wooden pencils were available from the stationer's, and a choice of pens and inkwells. Wine was also produced at that time. In actual fact, it had been made for centuries, if not for thousands of years. This was almost entirely for personal consumption or for domestic use. Each year at the end of September and following the grape harvest, the great wine-pressing festival took place, everyone helping with bare feet, to the immense joy of hordes of children, but an established wine industry was still a long way off. Agriculture served as a primary source of food for families, and along the country roads the whiff from the oxen used to haul road-levelling machinery for the dirt roads was stronger than that from vehicle exhausts.
Half a century later, the Franciacorta area, together with a great part of the Valli Bresciane, winding their way upwards toward the Alps, form one of the largest industrial complexes in Italy and in Europe. SMEs - above all in the mechanical sector - are blossoming; the stationer has given way to the hypermarket, the ox-carts have disappeared, while lorries and cars have taken over the tarmac. In this part of Italy, agriculture itself has also undergone development - perhaps somewhat overdue - but still of a great intensity, and it has few equals for its extraordinary growth.
"Bubbly" wine, was made in this area using both white and red grapes, perhaps inherited from the French who settled in this area. But today it is one of the proudest achievements of the Italian wine industry. An area dedicated to more than 1800 hectares, producing more than 5 million bottles per year of Franciacorta DOCG (www.franciacorta.net), to which must be added the DOC Terre di Franciacorta wines, both white and red, amounting to not less than another 5 million bottles, with overall sales of 80 million euro and steady growth at a rhythm of 5-10 percent annually. This all adds up to this area being considered as a real and authentic wine district, including its 19 towns, many belonging to the Valli Bresciane district, where the people have succeeded in transforming the art of winemaking into metal working and mechanics.
Franciacorta's success, judged as the only wine able to compete with the French wines from Champagne, can be attributed to an ability, perhaps unique, to combine both traditions and science in winemaking. "Bubbly" wine has always been made by using white grapes (Chardonnay and Pinot Bianco above all) and red grapes vinified in white (Pinot Nero and, a very long time ago "strawberry grapes"). Therefore, it was a blend very similar to that used for champagne. It then sufficed to combine this tradition with the methods practiced in the area and the most sophisticated methods for wine-making to obtain an excellent wine. So it was that towards the end of the Sixties, a number of producers in the area began to bottle their produce, building up an image of quality and then distributing it, firstly only to the big cities in the North, and then throughout Italy, and now to a large measure abroad.
A very swift development, similar to that undergone by the area with regard to its industrial profile, achieved by hard work, courage on the part of entrepreneurs and a sense of challenge, leading in 1995 to receiving the Franciacorta DOCG denomination and being able to tackle world markets with heads held high, offering a product which is today considered to be of top quality. All this without neglecting the possibilities reserved for the vines destined for the production of traditional wines, and hence the launch of the Terre di Franciacorta DOC, a lively and delightful ruby red wine, produced from Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc vines. In addition, a white wine, dry and very pleasing to the palette, produced from Chardonnay grapes, also well able to conquer the tastes of a large part of the European market.
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