Improvement of sparkling wines production by a zoning approach in Franciacorta (Lombardy, Italy)

Franciacorta is a viticultural area which extends in the hills to the South of Iseo lake in Lombardy. It is particularly famous for the production of sparkling wines obtained mostly from Chardonnay and Pinot blanc and noir grapes. The name of this territory is of medieval origin and appeared for the first time in 1277 as “Franzacurta”, from the Latin “franchae curtes”, i.e. “tax-free” monasteries. It was geographically delimited in 1429, when it was a territory of the Republic of Venezia. Franciacorta viticultural history, as concern the production of sparkling wines with the Italian version of Champenoise method (Franciacorta “metodo tradizionale”), begun in 1960. Nowadays Franciacorta vineyards cover about 1.000 hectares and about 4 million bottles are produced. These wines has obtained recently the D.O.C.G. appellation, the highest level of the Italian classification of wines.

The “zoning” of Franciacorta appellation of origin territory was financially supported by the Consorzio Tutela Vini Franciacorta. Different landscape units, homogeneous zones as concern pedological, mesoclimate and land morphology traits (Bogoni et al., 1995), and some widely spread soil types were identified in Franciacorta area in 1992, at the beginning of a zoning work based on the study of “genotype x environment interactions” (Panont et al., 1994). Sensory evaluation of wines and statistical analyses of data are still in progress. Preliminary results are summarised in this paper.