“Welcome to the grape spa,” says a young woman called Gloria as she leads me from a dusty vineyard into a large corrugated metal warehouse on Ca’ Del Bosco’s estate in northern Italy. A grape spa? I brace myself to enter some kind of raisin hammam or viticultural onsen, but as I walk into the room, I’m faced with a sight that’s far less Feng Shui and more… log flume. Perky bunches of grapes travel down a rapid automatic blue conveyor belt where they’re rinsed with water and air bubbles, cleaned with citric acid (a natural disinfectant), rinsed again and then blow-dried before ascending from their bath on a stepped ramp ready for the first pressing. Ca’ Del Bosco has pioneered this grape washing process, and it’s an essential stage in ensuring the distinctive purity and intensity of its Franciacorta, a sparkling wine produced in the eponymous Italian region. And no, it’s not prosecco.
Rows of vines neatly planted at Bellavista’s winery
You won’t find Franciacorta sold between Mars Bars and vapes at the corner shop nor poured in its gallons at bottomless brunch. In fact, you’ll hardly find this effervescent nectar in the UK at all because only 11% of bottles make it out of Italy each year. Around just 20 million bottles are produced on average annually, which may sound like an undrinkable quantity, but when compared to prosecco and champagne, which sit at around 600 and 300 million respectively, it’s a small glass. The reason why there’s such low production of Franciacorta isn’t because of a lack of demand either. Quite the opposite. When Christmas hits, wineries in the region, like Contadi Castaldi, are often sold out of stock before the yuletide guzzling has even begun. The limiting factor is geography.
You’ll notice if you visit Franciacorta, and particularly if you’re staying at L’Albereta – an ivy-cloaked hotel that sits atop a hill – that there’s a sizeable body of water curbing the north of the area. This is Lake Iseo – the fourth largest lake in the Lombardy region that has a notable cooling effect on the climate, which would otherwise be continental. The topography equally influences Franciacorta’s temperatures – a Bactrian camel of hills and the Prealps that shelter and protect vineyards. Throw in ancient geological activity in the form of a morainic amphitheatre that makes Franciacorta’s terroir gravelly and well-drained soils rammed with glacial mineral deposits, and you’ve got yourself ideal conditions for high-quality viticulture. But travel anywhere outside of Franciacorta’s microcosm of geology, weather and topography to plant more vineyards, and you’ll be met with a totally different terroir, as well as urban Brescia to the east, Mount Orfano to the south and, of course, Lake Iseo. With just 2,900 hectares of vineyards dedicated to Franciacorta production compared to 34,000 in Champagne, it makes sense why few bottles make it out of this boot-shaped nation.
The Bellavista winery and its surrounding vineyards
The kind of people who speak about Europe as if it were one country will likely relish the opportunity to relay the fact that Franciacorta means short France. They would be incorrect (although this is the direct translation from Italian). The name derives from the Latin expression Francae Curtes, which translates to tax-free lands. It was a very specific economic situation applied to the 19 towns in the region thanks to the Cluniac and Cistercian monks who set about doing, er, well, god’s work reclaiming and transforming swathes of land for winemaking. The industrious monks succeeded in obtaining an exemption from customs, making Franciacorta something of a viticultural Cayman Islands of the Middle Ages. Although there is reference to making ‘bitey wines’ in the Middle Ages in Franciacorta, which some believe were sparkling, this region was primarily known for making the still kind. That is until the 1960s, when, ironically, the mention of France in Franciacorta isn’t so irrelevant after all.
Underground cellars at Ca’ Del Bosco
It was vintner Franco Ziliani, also known as the appellation’s founding father, who transformed this languishing winegrowing area in Lombardy into what is now known as the Italian answer to champagne. An oenologist taken on by Count Guido Berlucchi of the eponymous winery to improve his unstable white wines, Ziliani saw promise in the region’s terroir for producing excellent sparkling wine and turned his head to France to learn from the masters of making fizz in (drumroll) Champagne. After three years of experimentation using méthode champenoise, a process of sparkling wine production requiring two fermentations (one in a bottle) and a minimum ageing of 15 months on lees, Ziliani produced about 3,000 bottles of 1961 vintage Pinot di Franciacorta Methode Champenoise Brut. It sold out in a matter of months.
Having only received DOCG status in 1995, Franciacorta is a young appellation in relative terms
As I walk through Ca’ Del Boscos’s dark, humid tunnels where bottles quietly ferment, Gloria tells me of how this philosophical switch was a big deal at the time when wine production in Italy before the 1960s was predominantly focused on quantity over quality. Zillani’s pivot attracted a well-financed cadre of winemaking estates to set up shop in this hilly slice of Lombardy, hungry to transform it into a powerhouse of premium sparkling wine. It was an ingenious marketing strategy. Champagne is a word that holds so much power. It transcends meaning beyond geography, appellation or wine type – it’s synonymous with quality, prestige, and celebration. Even as children, we’re made aware of its significance – I remember popping bottles of Champomme, a sparkling apple juice sold in France made to resemble a bottle of champagne, and squealing with glee as I sipped it from a plastic flute like a pint-sized debutante. Having only received DOCG status in 1995, Franciacorta is a young appellation in relative terms, so not many outside of Italy recognise its name (yet). But tell them Franciacorta is made with the same rigorous method and ethos as champagne, and they will leap to pour a glass.
Ca’ Del Bosco’s fermentation room
Massimo Listri
While some choose to explore the vineyards of Tuscany by Maserati, my trusty steed for discovering Franciacorta’s is a soft-top Fiat 500 (Hertz’s compact convertible category can only be so generous). I’m visiting three wineries during my two-day visit: Ca’ Del Bosco, Bellavista and Contadi Castaldi. These three alone account for around 40-50% of Franciacorta production in the region, playing prominent roles in the sheer number of bottles and styles of sparkling made. Except for the other large producers, Monte Rossa and Berlucchi, the remaining 117 in the Franciacorta consortium are mainly family-run, independent wineries – most just a few hectares in size. I’m told by Micaela and Giamila, who show me around Bellavista and Contadi Castaldi, that it’s very typical for your family to produce its own wine. Their grandpas have been doing it for decades (not that it’s any riserva). Family wine production is as everyday as your granny’s profuse marmalade making or scarf knitting back in Britain.
Like moles and London commuters, I spend much of my time in Franciacorta underground because that’s where the bottles also spend a good duration of their lives. Among the techniques for getting bubbles to materialise in wine, the one used by Franciacorta is by far the most costly and time-consuming, requiring a secondary fermentation to enact within each bottle. You wouldn’t make ossobuco with haste, and this applies to Franciacorta as well. Ageing on the lees can then vary from at least 15 months for non-vintages to more than 60 months (sometimes a decade) for reserve wines. When compared to prosecco, where the second fermentation happens in large steel tanks with a minimum production time of just 30 days, Franciacorta’s dinky annual production numbers start to tally.
Wolf sculptures at Ca’ Del Bosco
Massimo Listri
I’m not surprised that the Franciacorta tastes delicious on these visits, but what strikes me is the effort that goes into the design of these wineries. You could be served a glass of Franciacorta in a windowless room graced with Ikea furniture and plastic plants and remain giddy, yet these establishments have gone to great lengths to fashion spaces that could double as the Tate. Ca’ Del Bosco takes the biscuit with sculptures tucked into the most unexpected locations, including a pack of blue wolves on a roof and a life-sized wrinkly rhino suspended upside down from the ceiling in the fermentation room. You can’t help but laugh at a statue in a winery that spends its life in a hung(over) state.
Four alcoves carved into the walls serve as private chapels to sharpen your senses
2024 saw the introduction of the Dome of the Senses. It’s a circular, fuschia-lit room with a faintly sacred, decidedly ominous atmosphere reminiscent of a Bond villain’s lair. Four alcoves carved into the walls serve as private chapels for different experiences designed to sharpen your senses before the tasting. One includes a series of ASMR-style recordings of glugging bottles and fizzing tipples that are so sensual you find yourself unwillingly salivating while your skin prickles like goose flesh. You’re then ushered into a golden room with a ceiling shaped like an inverted cone to mimic a wine bottle that’s completely covered with 30,000 golden bottles of Ca’ del Bosco Prestige. If it’s hard to picture, just imagine if Majestic Wine had a field day on the ceiling of the Florentine Duomo. Figuratively immersed, you descend the lift from the ceiling to the floor as a bubble might in the bottle. Or a dead cell of yeast, Gloria adds, but generally, people prefer not to play fungus.
The paved entrance to Bellavista
Dazzled by these winery tours, I cannot help but bring it up with a stranger I meet at L’Albereta’s swimming pool one morning at 7am. Assuming we’re both here for the similar mission of swimming lengths to repent hedonism, we get talking by the poolside while fastening our towelling robes. When I divulge the details of the Ca’ Del Bosco’s Dome of the Senses, the colossal two-story swing sculpture at Bellavista, and the neon-signed underground wine cellars of Contadi Castaldi, he furrows his brow, narrows his eyes and looks at me confused. “This is northern Italy, darling. What did you expect?”
Then, the penny drops. Although the emulation of champagne has arguably been the driving force behind the success of Franciacorta, it’s still very much its own distinct appellation, doing its own thing… the Italian way. Just as white wines are not alike by virtue of their colour, neither are sparkling ones the same because of their effervescence. Aside from the method and similar grape varieties, Franciacorta is increasingly forging its own identity beyond the blanket comparison. With only 63 harvests under its belt, it’s such a young appellation, which has its advantages in that it’s not so bogged down by tradition. One of the most compelling recent developments to break convention in the region is a movement towards zero dosage, meaning no sugar is added after disgorgement – the process of removing the dead yeast deposited in bottles after the secondary fermentation, where a dosage (containing Franciacorta base wine) is added to top up the lost fluid.
Rows of vines soak up the sunshine on Ca’ Del Bosco’s estate in Franciacorta
Giuseppe La Spada
It’s a gutsy switch but one that makes sense for a wine region that’s kissed with warmth and, hence, the optimal climate conditions for even and consistent grape ripening. Méthode champenoise was developed in direct response to the epic battle Champagne’s grapes waged to achieve ripeness in a brisker climate, so sugar was added to transform acidic, underripe grapes into something palatable. Franciacorta’s positioning 400 miles south of Champagne means its wines are already balanced, so moving towards zero dosage can emphasise the nuances of grapes and soil. Unable to hide behind the mask of sugar in zero-dosage bottles, winemakers must focus on the combination and flavour of Franciacorta base wine added after disgorgement. Each winery has its own unique, fine-tuned recipe, changing year on year. When I ask Gloria about the combination used at Ca’ Del Bosco, she turns to me, mouth pressed into a thin smile. “If you knew this, I would have to hire you or kill you.”
There are whispers it could become Italy's first 100% organic-certified appellation
Franciacorta is equally unique in its stringent commitment to ethical wine-making. Today, it’s a paragon of organic viticulture, with two-thirds of its vineyards qualifying as organic and whispers that it could become Italy’s first 100% organic-certified appellation. Social responsibility and legacy remain paramount where the tangible impacts of harsh chemicals can be easily felt in such a small, relatively urbanised patch of Lombardy.
This movement away from pesticides is what brought about the esteemed grape spa at Ca’ Del Bosco, using salad-washing machinery made by Turatti to banish insects, detritus and debris remaining on grapes that are no longer blasted with chemicals. It’s a pioneering invention for the sparkling wine industry, so much so Gloria tells me that French wineries visited over the summer to catch a glimpse of the spa in action. I guess you could say that the student became the master.
