Masottina R.D.O. Levante Rive di Ogliano Prosecco Superiore Extra Dry 2025
£15.75
The wine
Generous fragrances of lime, acacia blossom and wisteria entwine with pear, Golden Delicious apple, bergamot and pink grapefruit. Lively, saline and well structured on the palate, with notable hints of quince, lemon and herbs combining in a pleasant, lingering finish.
Rive di Ogliano is a single named hillside, hand-harvested and vintage-dated, and Levante denotes the eastern-facing aspect as against Ponente to the west. Bottling the two sides of one hill separately is about as fine-grained as Prosecco gets, and makes the case that the wine can express site as clearly as any other.
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.
