Think of the Veneto region and you’ll instantly be filled with joy thanks to its most famous wine – Prosecco! But Veneto is so much more; it is a land of traditions, innovations, farmers and thinkers, a very big region that has been cultivating vines since the Etruscan times.
Veneto’s wine suffers from a slightly split personality. On the one hand you have the lightness and brightness of the sparkling wines made using Glera grapes coming from the Conegliano Valdobbiadene area, which are made to drink straight away, but on the other you can experience large and majestic wines such as Amarone, made from a blend of ancient grape varieties such as Corvina , Corvinone and Rondinella. These are wines that elegantly conquer the palate with big, bold flavours – especially when they are allowed to age. It’s no coincidence that Vinitaly, the most important wine exhibition in Italy, has taken place in Verona since 1967.
Veneto is a region of colours; the lush sea blue, the bright white of its most important peaks jutting through the thick gray fog and the splendid green of the hills that guard the historical buildings of Venice, Verona , Treviso, Padua and Vicenza. It goes without saying that with such a complex and varied land there was a need from the very beginning to protect the different varieties of wine.
There are fourteen DOCG and twenty-seven DOC appellations in Veneto, which cover over twenty percent of Italy's ‘quality wine’ production. If you pay a visit to the bars around the small villages of Veneto you’ll see the carved, charming faces of the locals, who speak using one of the most melodic dialects in the country while holding a glass of ombra (a 100ml glass of wine) or sipping the much more famous spritz.
The production of red wine is slightly lower than white, with some varieties so rare that they’re almost impossible to find outside of Veneto. Despite this, the grape that covers more than thirty percent of the vineyards is actually Merlot.
