Prosecco, the fruity sparkling wine made in the northeastern hills of Italy, is gaining in global popularity — and producers of Champagne, for so long the dominant bubbly wine, are taking note.
Prosecco has become the best-selling sparkling wine in the world by volume and experts have said it is eroding the market share of Champagne, the French wine that is synonymous with celebration, but also comes with a heftier price tag.
The Italian wine’s production eclipsed Champagne’s five years ago and is now 75 percent higher at 544 million bottles.
Champagne still claims the revenues crown, cashing in a record 4.9 billion euros (US$5.6 billion) last year on 307 million bottles, 2.8 billion euros of that in exports.
However, Prosecco’s bubble shows no sign of bursting: Exports this year are trending up 16 percent over last year’s high of 804 million euros.
Adding insult to injury, sales are surging 40 percent in Champagne’s home country, France, according to one estimate.
The figures do not reflect the seasonal Christmas sales bump of 20 percent.
The Italian bubbly’s success is attributed to its lower price and its profile as an anytime libation, making it popular in the UK, the US and Germany, markets where Champagne has long flourished.
With an average production cost of 3.7 euros per bottle, a fraction of Champagne’s average 10.24 euros, Prosecco can be purchased at a price that makes it easier to buy as an after-work drink or for a casual gathering, without pomp and circumstance.
The lower price is in part made possible by a simpler production method.
It has two processes of fermentation, both in large tanks, whereas Champagne’s second fermentation period is done while the wine is bottled. That requires storing the Champagne bottles at an angle and turning them slightly every day by hand to help the fermentation — expensive manual labor when done over thousands of bottles.
Prosecco producers themselves are taken aback by their wine’s success and mindful not to squander it.
They are up against not only imitators, but also other sparkling wines, such as Spain’s Cava, which still does not rival Prosecco in terms of global sales, and Germany’s Sekt, which experts say has improved in quality.
Prosecco’s growing popularity, and the proliferation of sparkling wines in general fueled by younger drinkers, is forcing Champagne makers to up their game.
At the same time, the three consortiums that make Prosecco have taken some hints from the Champagne playbook. They successfully lobbied to have Prosecco as a brand with protected status switched from the grape once known as Prosecco, and now Glera, to a hilly territory in northeastern Italy.
It is based around the city of Treviso and encompasses five provinces in the wider Veneto region and four in neighboring Friuli Venezia Giulia, right up to the Slovenian border.
That change, made in 2009, has helped producers better control quality and fight against counterfeiters.
The most renowned of the three consortiums, Conegliano Valdobbiadene, is trying to get the territory recognized by UNESCO as a world heritage site, a label that experience in other regions shows boosts both tourism and the value of the product.
Prosecco makers are betting success on higher quality and higher-priced vintages.
The best Valdobbiadene can cost up to 30 euros.
Asolo, the smallest of the three consortia making Prosecco, has expanded its vineyards by 86 percent from 2011 to last year.
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