The empire of Italian sparkling wine has solid foundations, it rests on more than that 750 million bottles a year of which 600 million with denomination of origin, Prosecco Doc that dominates (56% of bottlings) but also with an infinite variety of productions that abundantly exceed the traditional Po production line. This is the photograph of the world of Italian bubbles, framed for the first time through the official sources of the certification bodies that is published in the Corriere Vinicolo, the trade publication of the Unione Italiana Vini (UIV). A 'Spumanti Dossier' which, net of the Prosecco phenomenon, records a unique productive effervescence in the world panorama of sparkling wines, with 80% of denominations that do not exceed 2.000 hectoliters of annual bottled (less than 270 thousand bottles). Micro-productions expression of the huge variety of vines and the 'sparkling wine fever' which has infected Italy in the vineyard and on the shelves, with a propensity for exports of over 70%.
In the dossier, created by the Uiv wine observatory, all the numbers on the denominations appear, region by region, which see, in addition to the Glera – building block of Prosecco from Veneto and Friuli – and to the international ones, hundreds of 'flagship' grape varieties, small-large protagonists of Italian sparkling wines, such as Lambrusco, Trebbiani, Moscati, Falanghine, Grechetti, Malvasie, Grillo, Nero d'Avola, Negroamaro and Vermentini and many others.
"A production fundamentally unbalanced on whites - writes Carlo Flamini - with only 4% of the total in pink and even smaller numbers for reds, mostly concentrated in small areas and in "flag" denominations".
An unequivocal demonstration that the "sparkling wine fever", ignited by the global success of Prosecco, has infected the whole boot, prompting many territories to seek (or create from scratch) their own vocation for bubbles.
Going into the specifics of the numbers from the Dossier, it can be deduced that the bottlings of sparkling wine in Italy amounted to 2020 million hectoliters in 5,6, equal to 750,6 million bottles of 0,75. This number is reached by adding 438 million bottles of DOC sparkling wine (58%), of which 417 million of Prosecco DOC, 182 million of DOCG (24%), 6 million of IGT (1%) and the rest of varietals and municipalities , the latter estimated (as outside the certification circuits) at around 107 million pieces.
At the territorial level, and restricting the analysis to PDO-PGP-varietal products, the largest production basin is obviously Veneto: here - Corriere Vinicolo points out - we are not talking about the territorial location of the producer, but about the territorial origin of the wine, for which it is more correct to say that Veneto sparkling wines (3,9 million hectoliters, equal to 528 million bottles) are the most produced, with a share of 82% of the total (for convenience, Prosecco Doc is considered a product of Venetian origin, even if the production is also spread in Friuli and important bottling quotas are recorded in regions such as Piedmont and Lombardy).
Followed by sparkling wines from Piedmont (69 million pieces, 11% of the total) and those from Lombardy, with a 3% share, equivalent to 21,3 million bottles. Two other regions are above 1%: Trentino (12 million) and Emilia-Romagna (8,8 million). From then on, only two regions have over one million pieces: Friuli-Venezia Giulia (1,3) and Sicily (1 million round), while all the others still have rather small numbers, including big names like Tuscany, which with the sparkling wine instead denotes very little familiarity.
