Franciacorta Traditional Method: superior Italian sparkling wine

Let’s start with the name. The traditional method is commonly known as Champagne, however this name is copyrighted, and cannot be used for wines produced outside that particular French region. The production process for these sparkling wines involves inducing a second fermentation after bottling through the addition of sugars, selected yeasts and mineral substances. Moving on to the numbers…. The pressure contained in a bottle of Franciacorta sparkling wine is approximately six atmospheres and, when opened, one and a half atmospheres are released in the form of bubbles. Once poured into the glass, the show begins in the form of bubbles that rise to the surface, the perlage. In a 750 millimeter bottle of wine, there are, incredibly, about 250 million bubbles. The vineyards of Franciacorta occupy about 20,000 hectares of land and are located in a hilly region between Brescia the southern edge of Lake Iseo. It is a strip of land with a mild climate which was formed from the Morainic amphitheater, in other words, it was...