The Story of Prosecco Superiore

Susan H. Gordon

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Hardback

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English

Rowman & Littlefield
15 February 2024

Wines; Antiques & collectables; Hotel & holiday accommodation guides

Why is Prosecco so popular?

In the United States, Prosecco is now a household word. Throughout the world, Prosecco bottles sell at twice the rate of Champagne’s, even during a pandemic. Although the comparison with Champagne, the great sparkling wine of northern France often erroneously used as synonym of sparkling wine, is a common one, it is not immediately obvious why it should be. This story of Prosecco Superiore — sparkling Prosecco grown in two small hilly historic zones of the ancient Venetian Republic’s interior lands — shows them as uniquely Italian sparkling wines, tracing them to those hills at the second half of the 19th century, time of uprisings that would oust Napoleon’s France and the Habsburgs’ Austria and lead to the creation of an Italian nation. Among the many who fought to make an Italy was a pharmaceutical student born four decades after the fall of Venice: local chemist, follower of ardent Italian insurgent Giuseppe Mazzini, Garibaldian soldier, winemaker, writer, inventor, cheerful and optimistic if informal politician Antonio Carpenè, founder of the oldest Prosecco winery and who created these wines’ prototype a century before materials such as stainless steel would finally exist to make them possible.

To tell the science and history of the making of Prosecco Superiore, its roots in Italian languages and cultures and in the lives and sounds of those hills of the Veneto’s upper Marca Trevigiana long celebrated as sites of the top Prosecco vineyards, this book is written in a style that leads readers to unfamiliar places so that they might move richly and daringly through 150 years of Prosecco’s landscape. The story moves through Carpenè’s days and follows his work into the mid-20th century as modern Prosecco began its rise, then into the 21st as farmers and scientists work Prosecco Superiore’s culture of hills and ingenuity into new blends of complexity, technology, and artisanship. Built on intensive and, as appropriate to wine, wide-ranging research, this story is both an imaginative and personal telling of the histories, methods, and places of Prosecco Superiore and a reader’s guide to wonder and wandering, acts well suited to both the enjoyment and the effects of Italy’s most important sparkling wines.

By: Susan H. Gordon
Imprint: Rowman & Littlefield
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 236mm, Width: 159mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 594g
ISBN: 9781538191262
ISBN 10: 1538191261
Pages: 314
Publication Date: 15 February 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Susan H. Gordon has been writing about wine for several years, with certifications and studies at the highest levels of the Wine and Spirit Education Trust and as an Italian Wine Ambassador of Italy’s international wine trade Vinitaly program. In 2022 she earned her PhD with her studies on the history, cultures, and technologies of the two Prosecco Superiore zones. The MFA in fiction she earned from The New School has been the basis of her ongoing writing experimentation and worries about language, as she thinks and reads in both Italian and American English and writes in the latter while working to resist its attempts to overtake the former. As a writer concerned with both wine and how words shape and unshape worldviews and abilities to see and know, she is well placed to write her way through the story of Italian land, nation, and technology that is Prosecco Superiore. In May 2020, her wine and language–concerned “What a Little Hilltop in Abruzzo Can Tell Us About Words for Place” was published in Gastronomica (University of California Press). She is a regular contributor to Forbes’ online platform where she writes about Italian wine. Since 2018 she has also covered the wines of the eastern United States for Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book (Mitchell Beazley).

Reviews for The Story of Prosecco Superiore

Gordon's book covers a lot of territory. The original subtitle, we are told, was ""Histories, Geographies, Languages, Topographies, Personalities, and Typologies of Prosecco Superiore."" That's a lot to think about. But the organizing principle is easy to grasp and enjoy: let's take a walk. A walk through history. A walk with Antonio Carpenè, without whom Prosecco would not exist. A walk in the Prosecco hills. A walk through the streets of Conegliano. Walking is good exercise, but more importantly, it is done at a pace that lets you notice and appreciate what you see and hear and think about the connections. Walking is a good thing and walking with Susan H. Gordon as she (and you) encounter all these people, places, things, ideas, and forces is quite an interesting and worthwhile experience. Like Prosecco Superiore, this book is a serious undertaking. But, also like Prosecco Superiore, it makes you smile the smile that comes from understanding something more serious than you thought it was.