Drusian

Glera picked from the slopes

Hand-picked Glera comes first for Francesco Drusian, winemaker at Drusian in Valdobbiadene, before the cellar decides how the bubbles will carry it. He has run the estate since 1988, as founder and winemaker, with the work centered on Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG and the hillside fruit around Bigolino di Valdobbiadene. The family story reaches back to the 1890s and three generations of vignaioli, but Francesco’s station is not preservation alone. He keeps the family line in motion through research, quality, and environmental respect, the three terms he returns to when speaking about the place that formed him.

The inheritance here is practical. To be born into these hills is to know how their exposures change, how the air moves between Venice and the Dolomites, how difficult slopes ask for more time from the hands. Francesco works inside that familiarity rather than above it. The range follows the same discipline across Valdobbiadene DOCG Brut, Extra Dry, Millesimato Dry, Superiore di Cartizze, and Drusian Sui Lieviti, each bottle holding a different pressure point in the house style: clarity, fruit, lift, and the territory behind the wine.

Fermentation held at 15-16°C

The method is modern where control matters and traditional where the vineyard asks to speak. Drusian works with Glera for its Prosecco Superiore, with Pinot Noir also present in the estate’s broader range, and the fruit comes from hillside vineyards set on calcareous and clayey soils. The vines sit between 650 and 1300 feet above sea level, on terrain that gives the cellar freshness, drainage, and the tension expected from Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG.

In the cellar, the base wine takes its second fermentation in stainless steel tanks by the Martinotti Charmat method. Drusian holds the prise de mousse at 15-16°C, slowly, to build the perlage without stripping the wine of its floral and fruit line. Selected native yeasts help keep the ferment tied to place. Since the 2022 harvest, grapes from the estate vineyards have carried SQNPI certification, a mark of integrated sustainable practice. The bottle has its own gesture too: a patented shape inspired by an upside-down glass, a small piece of design that belongs to the same house language as the wine.

The cellar above Bigolino

The estate sits in the Conegliano Valdobbiadene hills, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape since 2019, about 70km from Venice and 100km from the Dolomites. The approach is rural before it is formal: vineyard slopes, open views, the quiet of a hilltop winery built for tasting Prosecco rather than processing crowds. Inside, modern production equipment does not erase the family register. It gives Francesco cleaner lines to work with.

The tasting room carries that restraint. This is a place where the room points back to the cellar, and the cellar points back to the vineyard. The bottle in the glass is not treated as a finish line; it is part of the same loop of slope, harvest, tank, and bench-side decision. When the estate’s next step is not stated, the useful close is the wine already in hand: Drusian Sui Lieviti.