Bisol

Wine & Spirits Magazine reward the historical Cru Crede with 92 points Nov 21 2014

On October 21st San Francisco will be hosting the award ceremony for "100 wineries of the year", an important event organised in collaboration with Wine & Spirits Magazine, who have rooted for Bisol's time-honoured winery and will be awarding Crede Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG the princely score of 92 points, Valdobbiadene Superiore di Cartizze DOCG 90 points and Talento Metodo Classico Eliseo Cuvée del Fondatore 2002 90 points.

The Bisol reality, wine producers in Valdobbiadene for five centuries. Testimony that firmly places the Bisol family in the heart of the Prosecco and Cartizze production zone i.e. the land known as “Chartice” – Today's prestigious Cartizze hills – can be found as far back as the XVI century. Numerous references to the family have been made through the centuries leaving us with no doubt as to the permanence of Bisol's forefathers in the area of Valdobbiadene up to 1542 when a historical reference affirming Bisol as a grape-growing and wine producing family can be found: Eliseo Bisol gives life to a small but flowering business.

Only the brutality of the first world war would temporarily halt the progress of the business – in fact, the area around Valdobbiadene became the frontline for the opposing Austria-Hungary and Italian forces – in spite of everything, the viticulture business of the Bisol family once again gained strength in the middle 1920's thanks to Desiderio Bisol, the son of Eliseo. After the second world war Desiderio - or Jeio, as he was affectionately called by his wife – assigned different roles in the company to each of his four sons according to their educational formation: Antonio took care of administration, Eliseo was responsible for oenology, Aurelio took over the running of the vineyards while Claudio became general manager of the company.

From that moment on the growth in quality of the company has been closely linked to the experimentation of new techniques in the vineyards, all necessary to the aim of producing top quality wines. As the current president of the company Antonio Bisol recalls, “my father Desiderio was acutely sensitive to product quality and always tried to buy the best plots, the most expensive and steepest and therefore the most difficult to work, but it was that very steepness and composition which made them ideal for nurturing Glera grapes”.

Bisol is a name intrinsically associated with the history of Prosecco. Their tradition is intimately linked to the Valdobbiadene territory by roots that stretch back to 1542, when the Bisol family first began cultivating grapes. Today, Gianluca Bisol is the acting president and CEO and his brother, Desiderio, holds the position of Chief Enologist and Technical Director. Together they demonstrate a profound passion and respect for the culture of their land. In fact, Bisol has optimized wine production potential from the very well-suited Valdobbiadene hills and is expressed in a collection of superlative labels, which are distinguished for their freshness and elegance.

The Bisol family personally cultivates more than 20 vineyards located in the best suited areas of wine production. A jewel in this collection is the vineyard located on the top of the Cartizze hill; the most expensive vineyard for the production of sparkling wine in the world. The Bisol viticultural methods focuses on the health of the vines and environmental sustainability thanks to their conscientious agronomic management policy.

Their enological method aims to minimize the technical work in the winery by applying very precise control over every single phase of production. The vinification of grapes of each individual vineyard is done separately allowing the Prosecco, a wine noted for its delicacy, to express itself differently according to the composition of the soil. This results in wines that exalt freshness, elegance and classical aromas, both fruity and floral.

This is how the history of a territory is transferred into every bottle of Cru Bisol. Prosecco is a symbol of the tradition, where only the art and the tenacity of the heroic vine growers can endure the hardship of the “hand made” process. The search for excellence continues according to rigorous and advance.

The natural vocation of Prosecco reaches its maximum level of expression right here in Valdobbiadene, thanks to the unique characteristics of its territory: a high concentration of hilltop vineyards, sometimes cultivated under extreme conditions, with steep slopes, that compel all attempts at cultivation to be carried out manually.

Today Prosecco is produced over an ample territory consisting of 9 provinces and two regions, Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia. Production is based on the Pyramid of Quality (see relative section) and is divided substantially into three zones: the largest of all is the Prosecco DOC zone that covers 555 municipalities including the province of Treviso, half way up the pyramid we meet with Prosecco DOCG of Conegliano - Valdobbiadene that covers 15 municipalities and at the top of the Pyramid we find the production zone for Prosecco Cru Cartizze, that covers only 107 hectares of the Cartizze hill in the Municipality of Valdobbiadene.

The production process starts by harvesting Glera between the middle of September and the middle of October. During the harvest, the grapes are picked by passing through the vineyard at least three times in order to guarantee their perfectly mature state. The grapes, placed in steel pipes, are gradually brought to a temperature of 8°, starting the cryomaceration process that consists of maintaining the fermentation temperature for fourteen hours in order to enhance the aromatic characteristics of the grape variety.

The compound is then transferred to the pneumatic press – the historic Wilmess – where three different press cycles are carried out. After which most of the deposits have to be filtered out of the must and the fermentation period begins: Bisol use four different types of primary fermentation. The first takes place in steel vats with weekly racking and ends on average within 20 days. The second takes place in barriques with fifteen-day racking plus lees stirring every 7 days to keep the yeast in suspension.

The third type takes place in steel tanks without racking but with continuous tank agitation. The fourth occurs in steel tanks with frequent racking, every three days, and gradual temperature reduction. After fermentation and a brief period of ageing we begin the preparation of the Cuvée: from our plots we obtain varying types of grapes, some of them stand out for their particular bouquet, others are rich in flavour while still others are characterised by sustained acidity. It is therefore very important to carry out careful selection and mixing of the various types in order to obtain perfect organoleptic balance.

This work involves the entire Bisol family together with trusted technicians and last for 10 days. At the end of this fundamental work period the sparkling wine bases are ready. ‘Charmat Method” means placing the base sparkling wine into great pressurised tanks with thermo-conditioning water jackets. Natural yeasts, needed to ferment the sugars, are selected and added to the base sparkling wine. The second fermentation takes place at a temperature of 12° converting the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The secondary fermentation usually lasts for about thirty days.

Fermentation is carried out in a sealed steel tank so allowing the carbon dioxide that develops naturally during fermentation to remain combined with the mass of wine so initiating the sparkling process. The product is then filtered one last time and after a cold standing period of 10 days (at minus 2° centigrade) it is ready to be bottled.

The birth of the eighth wonder of the world (viticulture): The Prosecco pyramid. With the DOCG (Designation of Origin Controlled and Guaranteed) recognition for the two historical zones (Conegliano-Valdobbiadene and Asolo) and DOC Prosecco for the 650 municipalities of Veneto and Friuli a quality classification has finally been laid out similar to the one that has existed since 1927 in the Champagne region; a trampoline that launched it towards world dominance.

Up until twenty-two years ago the Prosecco reality was a business completely occupied with local production and hardly aware of its immense potentiality. The producers attributed their success to a fashion trend, a temporary craving for sparkling wines with a very insecure future that was not worth a healthy and thought out planning procedure. Armed with the positive reactions met with during many wine-tasting sessions in Italy and abroad the Bisol family became convinced of the necessity to give life to a large scale “Prosecco quality project”.

A project that above all would look to providing that protection for the territory that the Bisol family have always believed in exactly like Antonio Bisol, the President of our company and for 6 years the President of the Tutelary Consortium of Prosecco, who had theorised the installation of DOCG for the Prosecco of Valdobbiadene and Conegliano years before it actually came into being. 

Finally today, thanks to the fundamental groundwork laid down mostly by the State, DOC “Prosecco” has been created, which replaces IGT (and requires a reduction in output per hectare from 250 down to 180 hundredweight) and DOCG “Conegliano Valdobbiadene-Prosecco” and “Asolo-Prosecco” for the two historical zones, that are to be protected by the EU register. It also requires that a distinction be made between the grape variety and the controlled denomination of origin, replacing the grape name “Prosecco” with the synonym “Glera”. 

In this way a defence mechanism for the territory and a system of quality certification have been created that allow Prosecco to have a clear quality pyramid.

(All photos of Bisol ©Mattia Mionetto)