nouveau / liquid assets / preview / review PROSECCO Conegliano-Valdobbiadene Superficial harvest analysis 2018–22 Harvest Locality Conegliano 2018 Valdobbiadene Conegliano 2019 Valdobbiadene Conegliano 2020 Valdobbiadene Conegliano 2021 Valdobbiadene Conegliano 2022 Valdobbiadene 9.3


asked, “Where is all the juicy ripe pear fruit we are so used to?” We got the distinct impression that most of the defects could be tracked back to the grapes, not the handling or vinification, which made sense because the production method is short and relatively simple, and the vast majority of producers are extremely competent at what they do. This is why most Proseccos are so extraordinarily consistent. Trouble in the vineyard would be a logical explanation, and because the vast majority of the Proseccos submitted in 2022 were from the 2021 harvest, whether vintaged or not, the first thing we did was to check out 2021. But all sources, official and otherwise, suggested that 2021 was an excellent vintage. When I returned home from the judging, I continued to ask questions about 2021, but some producers even declared that it was possibly the greatest vintage they had ever experienced. So, I did a little digging into the basic parameters of the last five harvests, and this is what I found.


What immediately jumped out was the malic acid for Valdobbiadene. An average of 6.2g/l was so far off the charts that I asked the official source of my data to double-check, which they did, and it was confirmed to be correct. A quick look at the entries for 2022


28 | THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023 3.2 6.6 6.9 2.2


showed that no fewer than two thirds were exclusively from Valdobbiadene. The picking in 2021 might have started later than any of the other years in the table above, but obviously not late enough, because the grapes were simply not ripe. This explains why there was an absence of fruit, freshness, elegance, and softness in the Proseccos we tasted and why, consequently, the haul of medals was so scant. I hope that Prosecco producers in


Valdobbiadene will not get defensive about this analysis, because they need to accept that the grapes most of them harvested in 2021 were unripe before they encounter a similar year in the future. They might have started picking late for Prosecco in 2021 and the grapes had achieved sugar ripeness, but they were nowhere close to acid ripeness.


Lifetime Achievement Awards It has always been my hope to present just one or two Lifetime Achievement Awards per year, but when we started in 2018 and 2019, there had just been a round of retirements, so we had a lot of catching up to do. Then the pandemic happened, and a few years later, we find ourselves again trying to catch up. On top of which, half the intended recipients were traveling on the day of our awards dinner, so the process will take a couple of years. Here are the recipients of this year’s awards:


May 31 September 6 98


Michel Davesne of Champagne Deutz Before moving to work his magic at Champagne Deutz, Michel was the chef de cave at Palmer & Co, where he established its signature blanc de blancs style by focusing on Chardonnay from the eastern Montagne. He was also way ahead of his time, bottling a high proportion of magnums, even in 1985, when some vineyards produced barely one ton per hectare.


Alain Pailley of Domaine Alexander Bonnet When Lanson-BCC took over Alexander Bonnet in 1998, it was given the freedom and resources to express itself, and Alain, who has been chef de cave since 1985, set about enhancing Bonnet’s reputation for blanc de noirs, and developing Bonnet’s identity as a domaine in Les Riceys through a range of single-vineyard wines.


Michel Drappier of Champagne Drappier Just like his father, Michel has always been a keen exponent of low-sulfur regimes and large-bottle formats, the latter of which helps offset the former. This quest may have been a little too keen at times for me, personally, but you have to push the envelope to see what works in bottle rather than on paper, and he has certainly achieved that.


9.1 9.8 3.0 3.2 10.9 6.1 7.0 6.9 6.2 1.8 June 18 September 21 May 28 August 30 95 94 9.1 9.9 3.2 3.1 7.1 8.4 6.4 5.7 3.5 3.3 May 28 September 12 June 10 September 16 107 98 9.3 9.9 3.3 3.3 7.6 5.5 6.8 5.8 3.9 2.5 June 11 September 17 May 26 September 7 98 104 9.1 9.7 3.3 3.2 5.9 7.3 6.2 6.7 2.6 May 26 September 10 3.4 June 7 September 11 107 96 ABV % 9.8


pH Total acidity (g/l)


3.4 5.3


Tartaric acid (g/l)


6.2


Malic acid (g/l)


Flowering Picking 2.2 May 22 September 4 Days 105


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