While the name “Champagne” has an ease and a familiarity for most Americans, the same does not apply – yet – to “Franciacorta.”  Franciacorta is first an area, located between Lake Iseo and the city of Brescia, in the northern Italian province of Lombardy. It is also the name given to the sparkling wines made – as they are in Champagne and Franciacorta – by the classic method of a second fermentation in bottle.

In this most industrialized and prosperous region of Italy, what a surprise it is to find Lombardy’s sanctuary of sparkling wine, made from grapes grown on the rolling Alpine foothills in vineyards that share gentle slopes with villas, manors, castles, abbeys, farms and livable towns. This is Franciacorta, where vestiges of prehistoric vines – actual grape seeds – have been discovered, perhaps indicating a natural aptitude for viticulture.

The northern Italian climate, warmer than that of Champagne, is happily tempered here by the immense body of water in the basin of Lake Iseo and by the air currents descending from the neighboring Camonica Valley. Adding to the area’s desirability are the morainic hills, generated millions of years ago by the movement of glaciers. Unlike the chalky soils of the Marne Valley in France, this is made of pebbles, silt and sand; it is a light and perfectly drained soil, ideal for grape vines.

Then. . .

From ancient times, the wines from the Franciacorta hills produced commentary by Pliny the Elder and Virgil, and as far back as the 2^nd century B.C. there is documentation of vines trained onto elm and poplar trees by the roadsides. There is even textual evidence that in 1570 a wine “with bubbles” was being produced in Franciacorta and described by one Gerolamo Conforti as “optimum e mordacissimo (very pungent, biting).” 

In days of yore, there were hand-operated wooden screw presses with stone disks to crush the grapes, which then fermented in the terracotta amphora, and eventually in the wooden barrel. The wine was not as strong, not as sweet as the wines of southern Italy, but even after the fall of Rome, viniculture was kept alive here by the monasteries for religious and medicinal purposes.

Though barbarian raiders often pillaged the monasteries, and legend says they drank their wines from the skulls of their dead enemies, by the 8^th and 9^th centuries, the reforms of Charlemagne had allowed for the revival of viticulture; both red and white wines from Franciacorta were being vigorously exchanged for olive oils, salt, and spices from the Liguria region on the Mediterranean side. By 1227 A.D., the name of Franciacorta appeared as a major wine supplier to Brescia and Alpine towns, and to cities of the Po Valley to the south.

In the 19^th century, the area produced 35% more wine than it does today, described by historian Gabriele Rosa as “most excellent, vivacious and gracious.” And while Lombardy boasted 190 distinct grape varieties in the 19^th century, all that finished when the vine louse, phylloxera, devastated Europe’s vineyards, destroying a heritage of local vines that could never quite be replaced.

Then the 20^th century saw two world wars make their way onto these northern Italian soils, so that by 1971, in his highly regarded food and wine tome, The Food of Italy, Waverley Root did not even mention Franciacorta in his discourse on Lombardy.

. . .and Now

What I saw and tasted when I visited Franciacorta in late 2003 reflects not only the exploding wine economy of the past three decades, and the prestige and elevation of Franciacorta’s sparkling wines in just the last decade, but the new “formula” – that is, grapes that have not necessarily known this mineral-rich soil in the past, plus the fact that the growers are a younger generation of modern and dynamic entrepreneurs with no tradition to refer to and, therefore, no deep historical burden to bind and constrain development and innovation.

The 60s and 70s

Back in the 1960s, a pioneering young winemaker in Franciacorta, Franco Ziliani, perhaps inspired by Girolamo Conforti’s 1570 description of “bubbles,” decided to initiate production of a sparkling wine using the classic method of Champagne, in France. In that process, a second fermentation occurs in the individual bottles, turned upside down and held at an angle for a long time in pupitres, the wooden V-shaped frames used for the remuage process that separates the yeasts from the wine in each bottle. This is time and space-consuming, and, therefore, costly.

Like many a pioneer in California’s vineyards, the young Ziliani was unabashedly experimental, and on his first attempt, the wine didn’t ferment. No luck the second time either, he said, but “fortunately, it worked on the third time, and the next, because I made 20,000 bottles!” Other producers followed in the 70s, when a spumante could be made either by tank fermentation or by the far costlier refermentation in bottle.

The 80s and 90's

By the 80s, grape combinations of chardonnay (for elegance and finesse), pinot blanc (for fruity fragrance), and pinot noir (for structure and vigor) in varying percentages were being used, and the results were showing enough style to attract critics, connoisseurs and investors. American authors Sheldon and Pauline Wasserman wrote in their book, Sparkling Wine, that the Franciacorta wine estate of Ca’ del Bosco had produced “the finest sparkling wine we’ve tasted outside of Champagne itself – and far better than many Champagnes!”

Construction magnate Vittorio Moretti was one of those who planted extensive vineyards and thought of it as a financial gamble, figuring that if nothing else, winemaking would be a very pleasant hobby. “But when I realized that we were creating something very special, it became a labor of love,” says Moretti. And from Giovanni Cavalleri, a financier who transformed his family estate into the state-of-the-art winery it is today, “Wine demands more patience than other businesses, but I don’t know of any work that provides greater satisfaction.”

The late 1980s saw a tightening of regulations and controls over production and marketing for all Italian wines, but the Franciacorta producers bound themselves to even higher standards, forming a consortium to determine new norms. These included self-imposed restrictions requiring dense plantings of vineyards (a minimum of 3,300 plants per hectare since density forces vine roots to compete for space, resulting in lower yields of healthier grapes), a yield per hectare of 10 tons maximum for chardonnay, pinot nero, and pinot bianco, and low, short training of vines (instead of the high espalier system with full exposure to sunlight which would give prolific yields but not grapes of strength and concentration).

The steps in making a sparkling wine were defined, the time of bottle refermentation on the lees was to be at least 18 months, the name Franciacorta would apply only to sparkling wines made by in-bottle refermentation, all tank methods would henceforth be excluded, and all sparkling wines would be both vinified and processed entirely within the DOC zone.

The payoff was not only an excellent product, but one so good that by 1995, Franciacorta sparkling wine was awarded the highest, most coveted appellation, and was classified as DOCG (Denomination of Controlled and Guaranteed Origin). Franciacorta was the first Italian brut wine made only through refermentation in bottle to receive this recognition, and what began with only a few thousand bottles annually is now up to 4 million a year. 

About those Franciacorta sparklers 

The name Franciacorta has come to identify a territory and its sparkling wine, like Champagne, only on a far smaller scale. The labels no longer use the generic term vino spumante, nor do they mention the method of production any more than bottles of Champagne explain on the label how they are fermented. As one producer explained, “Why should Franciacorta be called spumante and risk being identified with everything that bubbles, including cheap, artificially carbonated wines?” The designation of Franciacorta DOCG is sufficient.”

It also means that each variety of grape and each vineyard of the DOCG area have been harvested separately, after having been cultivated by organic methods. And that the grapes have been picked rigorously by hand and then kept whole in small containers until the time for crushing. The new norms establish the longest and most exacting process of elaboration in bottle of any of the world’s classified sparkling wines.

For example, only the juices from the first two pressings (65% or less of the weight  of the grapes) may be used to make the base wines. Each house follows subtle variations in cellar practices, with a few estates still choosing to gently crush the grapes in old-style wooden basket presses and then ferment and mature a portion of the base wines in oak barrels for richness and complexity, while other houses crush the grapes gently in horizontal pneumatic presses. The elite wines of Franciacorta, like the cream of Champagne, are matured for four years, and sometimes longer, to achieve finer and more persistent bubbles, called perlage, and mellower, more harmonious flavors.

When I visited Franciacorta last November, five days of fog sometimes obscured  the sweep of Lombardy’s 26,951 hectares of vineyards and the tumble of Franciacorta’s yellowing vines down hillsides after pressings in the fall, but it was clear that the area is more than just the celebrated bubbles. There are 7,000 years of human history here, and it can be taken in by car, on horseback, or by bike on well-marked bicycle routes. The regional wine consorzio even provides maps of hikes to take you through the terraced vineyards.

I saw the old rural idyll of sleepy farmhouses and tended acreage, medieval walls and crenellated clock towers, monasteries and abbeys with their arched loggias and double loggias, and patrician palazzi with family crests. These now co-exist with genteel commercial wine estates and a couple of Relais & Chateaux Hotels with golf courses, plus a program of agriturismo, where some estates in Franciacorta rent out rooms or apartments, or provide meals and wine tastings. Franciacorta’s wine renaissance has also brought in a new era in cuisine, showcasing everything from the simple trattoria and osteria to alta cucina in elegant surroundings.

My first wine distiller offered a well-kept estate with horses, indoor and outdoor riding rings, and an elegantly rustic dining room from whose kitchen emerged fantasies of Lombardy specialties: Lombardy cheeses, Lombardy honey, and Lombardy wines.  

Like Bellavista and Ca’ del Bosco, Cavalleri is one of the producers that made Franciacorta a player in the world of sparkling wine. It is the wine estate of the Cavalleri family of Erbusco, reported by ancient deeds to be landowners there since 1450. In the beginning of the 20^th century, the estate had a cellar for wine production and was still selling red and white wines on the premises and to the area’s renowned restaurants into the 60s when Italian government law created the DOC ( Denomination of Controlled Origin) appellation in 1967.

The family reorganized and rejuvenated, and by 1980, under the leadership of young Giovanni Cavalleri, had built new premises and new cellars in the middle of the family vineyards, just outside the town precincts. Giovanni, president of four financial companies and on the board of directors of a bank when he took over the estate from his father in 1977, not only bore a fervent dedication to his family’s vineyards, but brought entrepreneurial spirit and investment experience.  

By the 90s, the Cavalleri vineyards had increased from 10 hectares to 31, which the company believes to be the optimum vineyard size for a low-medium producer (200,000 bottles annually), and had enlarged their new cellar, begun aging wine in barriques, and built gracious, expensively appointed rooms, replete with fine art, for guests and customer wine tastings. They purchased new machinery for soft pressing, steel tanks and refrigeration equipment for musts. They replaced old vineyards with new ones through a wise selection of the clones of the chardonnay vine, fitting both the climate and the soil characteristics of the district, and proving worthy as the pillar and common denominator of Cavalleri’s whites and sparklers.

Cavalleri produced its first 6,000 bottles of Franciacorta in 1979, and by 1982, after 24 months of ripening by the methode champenoise, the result bore character and brilliance right from its debut. Giovanni Cavalleri was on the premises when I was there, hosting from behind the scenes in a hunter green corduroy jacket. With his movie star features and salt-and-pepper hair, he is a very handsome 60-something man who has brought his three daughters into the family business. The average age of the company staff is late thirties, and almost everyone has been with the company since the start of Giovanni’s tenure. 

The wine houses of Franciacorta, most of them converted in the last 30 years from venerable farms and villas into vanguard wine estates, are small to medium-sized, and there are fewer than 75 in the entire region – unlike Champagne, which is mostly a collection of large-scale merchant houses. Also, while many of the brands of Champagne acquire grapes or base wines en masse, Franciacorta DOCG is also unique among sparkling wine zones of Europe since production comes from individual estates that actually grow their own grapes. Says Lorenzo Gatti of the Gatti estate, "When you’re involved in everything from planting and tending vines to making wine, and bottling it, and selling it, as you learn, you can come closer to perfection.”

In their comprehensive new book, Vino Italiano, with a foreword by Mario Batali, Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch praise the Italian sparklers, noting that those “from Franciacorta’s Lombardy region can stand toe-to-toe with Champagne.” The prized bubbly wines of Franciacorta described by Girolamo Conforti in his scholarly treatise on wines in 1570 were made in barrels and vats, but consider this: If there had been glass bottles strong enough to withstand fermentation pressures at that time, it might have been Franciacorta that arrived first on European markets – 100 years ahead of Champagne!.