Prosecco — Italy's other effervescent offering — also rises to the occasion.
About 130 miles from Correggio, over on the Italian Riviera, Pierluigi Lugano, who began as a wine trader before gradually mastering oenology, has been making another great Italian sparkler — Prosecco — at his Enoteca Bisson, founded in 1978. Here the terraced Ligurian vineyards are cut into mountains that fall into the Mediterranean, making mechanization all but impossible. And so Lugano's Bisson wines are handmade by necessity, with grapes fermented in steel to preserve the individuality of each vineyard's fruit. Although Lugano is a proponent of obscure Ligurian varietals, his Prosecco dei Colli Trevigiani ($16; smithandvine.com) is made in collaboration with a vineyard in Prosecco's traditional region, the Veneto. This unusual offering is dry and biscuity, with a light effervescence that quickly subsides in the glass: an elegant summer wine that is the fizzy cousin of Bisson's celebrated white, Marea, and not just — as many a Prosecco can be — a penny-pinching substitute for Champagne.
