La Primavera di Barbara

Graziano Merotto named this wine for his daughter. He first made it in the early 1990s, some twenty years after he founded his winery in Col San Martino, and called it La Primavera di Barbara: Barbara's spring. In a range that has since grown to a Cartizze and a founder's cuvée, the house still calls it its pride.

The grapes come from a small, selected vineyard in Col San Martino. The blend is 90% Glera and 10% Perera, one of the local varieties the Conegliano Valdobbiadene rules allow beside Glera, up to 15% of the wine.

The grapes are pressed softly and the must fermented at controlled temperature. The wine then takes its bubbles in a pressure tank over about 60 days at 12 to 13 °C. This is the Martinotti method, which Graziano began working with at the end of the 1970s, when the first autoclave came into the cellar and the oenologist Piero Berton guided his hand.

Barbara's wine is made Dry, which in Prosecco is sweeter than it sounds. On the scale the house itself sets out, Brut sits at 6 to 12 g/L of sugar, Extra Dry at 12 to 17, and Dry at 17 to 32. Merotto gives 21 g/L for this one.