The Sustainable Paradox: Borgoluce’s Highly Manipulated Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG

Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore D.O.C.G. from the Borgoluce winery is a wine that contradicts all the trappings of natural wine, so much so that reading the description of how it is produced makes you shiver.

Still, the end result is a clean prosecco that isn’t particularly lively or memorable, but when you drink a glass of it, you don’t even taste the sulfites.

So the question is: “Can a highly manipulated wine, studied in every detail and put on a gustatory track, be considered good?”

“Good” is a big word, even if it is undeniable that the Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore D.O.C.G. of the Borgoluce winery is a wine without defects and with a discreet quality.

Compared to the bottles of the Prosecco industries such as Valdoca, it is head and shoulders above. Acidity, depth, aroma, fruit—everything is punctuated with precision and a certain care.

Don’t ask it to be an imaginative and vibrant wine, but it’s ok. If you then consider that it is sold at a more than honest price, 11.50 euros is a more than decent bottle.

Let’s see how this prosecco is made. Harvest, soft pressing, and induced fermentation with selected yeasts at a controlled temperature.

Followed by refermentation at a controlled temperature, cold stabilization at -1 °C, microfiltration, and bottling. More than conventional, it looks like a Star Trek villain, Vulcan, in its logic and in every sterile operation.

The positive side is that the cultivation is organic, so at least you won’t drink any chemical pesticides. But the discussion is broader and comes from my visit to the Treviso area.

Not knowing where to sleep, I found a B&B.

To my great surprise, I discovered that this B&B was a farm, cellar, brewery, dairy, and mill—in short, a workshop of taste.

The following day I visited the estate and was amazed by the care and attention placed in the breeding of animals in the wild and in the production of cheeses, ricottas, and buffalo mozzarella made in Susegana.

There’s nothing to say; it’s a magnificent place. Big heart, yes. A magnificent welcome, yes. The breakfast with handmade natural dairy and baked products was amazing, yes! Courses for school groups, yes! The project is very green, yes! And there is a certain underlying humanism; yes, it was all perfect, except the wines.

Unfortunately, for the wine part, a biological approach was chosen, yes, but a very technological one, not to say exasperated interventionism, but with almost one hundred hectares of vineyards, it was not possible to make an artisanal wine, they told me.

We’re talking about a huge farm that employs hundreds of people. It would not have been convenient or economically efficient. At least they don’t spread pesticides and herbicides, and this is a great result for such a complex company.

So how should we judge this prosecco?

It’s not a bad wine in the strictest sense; the smells are light, but the taste is pleasant and can’t be denied.

Each parameter is set to mediocrity, in the sense that everything is precisely in the middle. Not too green, not too fruity, not too exciting, but rocky enough; not too fizzy, but certainly not evanescent.

It goes down and leaves you with a nice memory and a clean mouth. It must be said that it is not a sulfite juice like Valdoca, but they are not in competition. This is not an industrial wine, but one from a large cellar that has chosen technology as a linguistic tool.

It’s stylized. Each brick has been laid down by the winemaker; there is no room for the terroir or raw material, which has been shaped down to the smallest detail.

They are choices, an interpretation; the market is free, and prosecco sells by the resounding millions of bottles at a time, so let’s get going.

What we want to know is whether or not a traditional prosecco made with high-tech and invasive methods can be good and sustainable.

Ok, there’s technology in this wine, but apart from the yeasts, there’s no crap like albumin, casein, chemicals, stabilizers, or other rubbish.

Sure, yeast changes wine, but it’s not the end of the world.

This Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore D.O.C.G. of the Borgoluce winery is promoted. It is not a champion; it is not a recommended wine, but it defends itself and is sustainable at the vineyard level.

At least they don’t do any damage, they don’t pollute the groundwater, and they produce conscientiously.

The aesthetic result is not exciting, but there are no defects to report.