2017 Silvano Follador Prosecco Superiore Brut Nature Valdobbiadene 750 ml

With just one sip of the BONE DRY 2017 Silvano Follador Prosecco Superiore Brut Nature Valdobbiadene, you’ll see how this is dry, complex, and uplifting bubbly eschews Prosecco’s standard sweetness and instead recalls Blanc de Blancs Champagne or Franciacorta. This is the work of a modern-day master: Prosecco for fans of serious sparkling wine from Valdobbiadene, Prosecco’s top region. Alberta and Silvano Follador’s dry, racy sparkler undergoes six months of lees aging in the tank, and clocks in at 0 g/L of residual sugar. Ian d’Agata of Vinous has called Silvano “one of the true masters of the Glera grape variety and wine,” whose Proseccos possess blooming citrus notes, racy minerality, lively acidity, and enhanced complexity from time mingling with the lees, and are a revelation for fans of the classic dry bubblies of France and Italy. At $25.99 per bottle on cases, this is “everyday luxury” in a bottle. But don’t delay, just 35 cases to go around.

The path of Silvano and Alberta Follador from Prosecco novices to Prosecco pioneers is one of trial and error, discovery and adaptation. They first inherited five acres of land when their paternal grandfather died in 1999, and five more from their mother’s father. Eager to make wine but acknowledging their novice status, they hired an outside winemaking consultant. The wines they produced were sweet—ranging from 12 to 26 g/L of residual sugar—and commercially viable, but lacking all character.  

By 2007, they had found the confidence they needed to ditch their consultant and pilot their own ship, guided by the organic and biodynamic principles they had started to embrace a few years earlier, as well as their desire to return to the wine its “dignity and genuineness.”

When their move to drier, terroir-displaying wines was a success, the Folladors were pleased but did not become complacent. So when a decision they made out of necessity in 2014—to combine their regular Brut Nature and their flagship traditional-method Cartizze into one wine—resulted in a wine that they were very proud of, they decided to follow that course in subsequent vintages.

The 2017 Silvano Follador Prosecco Superiore Brut Nature Valdobbiadene is the result. It is born of not only of the Folladors’ hard-won and meticulous winemaking skills, but also their openness, and willingness to follow the wine wherever it wants to go. Composed of grapes from the Folladors’ four plots in Valdobbiadene, the wine is processed via the Martinotti (Charmat) method, and aged on the lees for six months in stainless steel and concrete tanks.