Unless mentioned, all images provided by Ana Alves, Social Media & Marketing Manager at Brasseria Family Restaurants
Over the years, there have been several reports on The Write Taste about high quality Prosecco. For example, one article here discusses whether Prosecco is the world's most misunderstood wine due to misconceptions about what it really is and can be. The globally successful Italian sparkler continues to benefit from its popularity and brand familiarity. However, at the same time, its all-too-often perceived image as a cheap, light, sweetish, easy-drinking bubbly for celebrations and after-work chilling out is not advancing the category's reputation. One winery trying to do something about that is Andreola.
In 1984, Nazzareno Pola founded family estate, Andreola, in the heart of Valdobbiadene DOCG. Today, his son Stefano manages the business, which covers 110 hectares of vineyards, divided into 250 individual parcels. Exports account for 35% of sales with USA and UK among the most important markets.
After a complete brand redesign in 2009 and relocation to a larger and more modern, state-of-the-art winery, Andreola launched its Valdobbiadene DOCG line of wines. Last year, the company created the new Rive line in honour of their 40th anniversary. These single-vineyard wines showcase the unique terroir's influence on seven different expressions of the Glera grape.
Andreola is located about 50km from Venice between the sea and the Prealps, 100km south of the Dolomites. The steep, south-facing hills of Valdobbiadene, which became a DOCG region in 2009, generally range from 100 to 500 metres altitude and contain a mix of conglomerate rock, marl, sand and clay soils. A temperate climate with summer rain, cooling breezes and a large diurnal range ensure good growing conditions for the glera grape.
The production area of Valdobbiadene DOCG, which allows for Extra Brut, Brut, Extra Dry, and Dry expressions, is limited to 15 municipalities in the heart of Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore.
Andreola uses a non-invasive and eco-friendly approach to winemaking, avoiding the use of chemical sprays in the field and through gentle and fractional pressing of the grapes. The winery building itself has solar panels, allowing them to cover around 57% of energy needs.
Mirco Balliana, who became the winemaker in 2018 and has been named this year in the Drinks Business 'Master Winemaker 100', sees a clear difference between their approach and others. "Nowadays we are the company [committed] to single vineyard production", he explains. "We are now the main company producing eight types of Rive … grapes from a single village. We vinify single vineyards, keeping everything divided. If you have high quality grapes, or medium, or low quality and you put everything together, you will have average quality wines. Every year, we do more than 200 single vinifications. It's hard to manage, but that's the only way to guarantee high quality products."
Mirco Balliana: image by Robin Goldsmith
"The unique style that defines Andreola's sparkling wines is creaminess on the palate with intense, elegant aromas and a low tendency to oxidation."
They also harvest the grapes in very small baskets, rare for the appellation, in order not to crush any fruit prematurely. Using free-run juice from the press for all their wines, they avoid extracting bitter polyphenols. "We preserve the noble part of the juice", he says, "without too much tannin and richer in sugars, acidic compounds and aromas. That's why we have very fresh and intense aromas in our wines."
Their additive-free oenology approach means that wines are clarified by centrifugation and membrane filtration only, just to remove the lees. "This is very important for the integrity of the fruit, the creaminess of the bubbles and also for the shelf life of the products", Balliana adds.
"Territory, product, method are encapsulated by Valdobbiadene."
Another point of difference from most other producers in the region is that the winery does not call its wines 'Prosecco', preferring to use the name 'Valdobbiadene' instead. "We think that the power of this product is with the word Valdobbiadene", describes Mirco, adding that it encapsulates the product itself, the land it comes from and the winemaking method used. "If you use the word Prosecco", he adds, "you immediately relate to something else. Nowadays Prosecco is like a cheap industrial product and with Valdobbiadene we have a chance to disconnect this type of communication and quality. So that's why we've avoided the word Prosecco for the past five years."
Conegliano Valdobbiadene's Rive: photo credit Arcangelo Piai
Since 2010, the winery has been part of Cervim, an international organisation founded in 1987 to promote and protect 'heroic viticulture'. This term refers to viticulture on high hills and mountains at altitudes greater than 500 metres with vines planted on terraced and stepped slopes greater than 30% gradient.
To create a clear identity, CERVIM developed, registered and introduced a European collective trademark called 'Heroic Viticulture', which certifies wines that meet these conditions.
In the Valdobbiadene DOCG area, manual viticulture has been defined as heroic and was one of several factors that led to the area's recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2019.
The name 'Rive' comes from the local dialect and refers to the steep slopes of the Valdobbiadene hills. So wines with the 'Rive' designation come from single vineyards in a particular municipality, village or hamlet of the region renowned for producing high-quality grapes with terroir-specific characteristics.
There are 43 Rive in the denomination and each of them expresses a different combination of soil, exposure and microclimate. Production is limited, all the grapes are hand-harvested and the name of the 'riva' is shown on the bottle label.
Having identified several plots on grassy ridges with unique characteristics that could be expressed through single vineyard wines, Stefano Pola and oenologist Mirco Balliana created the Rive Collection.
Today, Andreola produces and bottles the most 'Rive'-branded sparkling wines in the entire denomination.
Brasseria Notting Hill: image by Robin Goldsmith
Recently, Andreola hosted a dinner at Brasseria Notting Hill, where Chef Gonçalo Bouceiro prepared a special menu to accompany a selection of wines. All the wines sampled were in dark glass bottles, protecting them from potential light strike.
Andreola wines tasted at the dinner: image by Robin Goldsmith
This is the first wine that Stefano Pola made in 2010, 26 years after the company was founded. An Extra Brut expression with no dosage, this is perfect as an aperitif.
👃 Nose: Aromas of golden apple, citrus, peach and white blossom.
😋 Palate: similar to the above with a touch of salinity and a slight hint of dried chamomile on the finish.
A Brut expression with 7g/L residual sugar.
👃 Nose: Aromatic and floral with fruity notes of apple, underripe pear and a touch of apricot.
😋 Palate: Notes of apple and stone fruit with a soft, creamy, rounded palate and a tangy citrus edge.
🍴 Brasseria Food Pairing: Fassona beef tartare in a chive and lime emulsion served on toasted brioche. The zesty tang of the dressing worked well with this wine, a good example to show how sparkling white wine can combine successfully with red meat.
Dirupo is the first label produced by Andreola in 1984. It's designed to be the perfect combination of base wines to achieve both balance and complexity. Wines are blind tasted from 80-100 steep plots that embody the 'heroic viticulture' idea. The more full-bodied of these are then reserved for the Brut version and the leaner base wines go into the Extra Dry.
This is a Brut expression, with 8g/L residual sugar, but as it's made from all 15 communes of Conegliano Valdobbiadene, cannot be labelled as a 'Rive' wine.
👃 Nose: Floral and fresh with notes of green apple, peach and a touch of lemon salt.
😋 Palate: Crisp, fruity and rounded with notes of peach and lemon zest with a touch of salinity, a creamy mouth feel and a mineral edge on the finish.
🍴 Brasseria Food Pairing: Handmade Bigoli pasta (traditional Veneto thick spaghetti) with butter, Cantabrian anchovy fillets and lemon zest. This dish was delicious and a perfect pairing for the wine!
A single vineyard wine that Magnus Saccone, Andreola's Export Director, calls "truly the ambassador of heroic viticulture", as the gradient of the slope here is 72°!
It's an Extra Dry expression with 14g/L residual sugar.
👃 Nose: Intensely floral with fruity notes of stone fruit and lime.
😋 Palate: Notes of ripe apple, lime and white peach with a mineral touch and a gentle, creamy, rounded mouth feel.
🍴 Brasseria Food Pairing: Grilled Scottish beef fillet with sautéed golden girolle mushrooms, potato millefeuille and glossy beef jus. Another great pairing with the fresh acidity cleansing the palate.
Balliana describes how this wine and the others illustrate both the uniqueness of Andreola's Rive Collection and their location. These wines are "different shadows of our appellation", he says. "Same grape varieties and same method, but you can pair with different types of food … and that's the power - just switching [between] different vineyards. I don't know if any other places in the world could also play with different sugar levels.
"We have more acidity in this wine. Sometimes Extra Dry [expressions] are made by just putting in more sugar. In my idea of winemaking, an Extra Dry is where I find a vineyard able to absorb the level of sugar to get the balance. That's completely different … and you don't even feel the residual sugar. This wine has more acidity than sugar and both are in balance."
The wine has been produced to commemorate the founder of the company, Nazzareno Pola. It's an Extra Dry expression with 17g/L residual sugar, made from the best Dirupo base wine for the vintage every year, in this case from the Rive di Santo Stefano vineyard. Balliana notes how the sandy and marl soils of the "special terroir" close to Cartizze and the pre-Alps, can "absorb a high sugar content, but you don't even feel it", he says.
👃 Nose: Notes of almond, white flowers, pear and white peach.
😋 Palate: Juicy stone fruit notes with touches of orange and pastry plus a mineral/green almond finish.
🍴 Brasseria Food Pairing: An Italian twist on the traditional French tarte tatin, here using peaches instead of apples. Another well-matched food and wine combination.
Prosecco is a familiar term for all wine drinkers, whatever level of knowledge and experience; Valdobbiadene less so. Andreola is clearly committed to differentiating its higher altitude, limited production, terroir-expressive Valdobbiadene DOCG wines from the globally better known Prosecco DOC. It's certainly a challenge - you might say a heroic one - but the quality of the wines speak for themselves. Cin cin!
