Masottina Contrada Granda Prosecco Superiore Extra Dry
£12.25
The wine
Pale yellow with straw highlights and copious bubbles. Soft and well defined on the nose, with green apple, plum, pear and apricot alternating with jasmine, acacia and wisteria. Lean and dry in the mouth despite the first impression of sweetness, subtle and harmonious with fresh fruit still dominant into a lingering finish.
Conegliano Valdobbiadene Superiore is the top DOCG, and Extra Dry is its traditional style, sitting between 12 and 17 grams of residual sugar. The hillside fruit gives greater concentration and a longer finish than valley-floor Prosecco, and the small amount of sugar balances the acidity that altitude preserves.
The producer
Masottina
View all Masottina winesThe Dal Bianco family have made wine since 1946, when grandfather Epifanio bought the five-hectare Ai Palazzi estate at Gorgo al Monticano. Restoring the manor house above the vineyard uncovered an old inscription reading Casa Masottina, and the name stuck.
Three generations on, the wines come from nearly 300 hectares across the Conegliano Valdobbiadene hills and the wider Veneto. Those hills were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2019 for their cultural landscape: steep, narrow ridges worked by hand because no machine can reach them, with vineyards, woodland and small settlements interleaved.
The family were among the pioneers of Rive bottlings, the Prosecco equivalent of a single-vineyard wine. Rive means steep hillside in the local dialect, and only 43 of them are recognised; the fruit must come from that named hill alone, be hand-harvested and carry a vintage. Masottina's Rive di Ogliano wines are among the most respected examples, and they make an unusually clear case that Prosecco can express site.
