Brand story
Zardetto Prosecco Extra Dry
Zardetto has made sparkling wine and nothing else since Pino Zardetto founded the house in Conegliano in 1969. He had trained at the town's oenological school — Italy's first, established in 1876 — and built the winery at the eastern end of the Conegliano Valdobbiadene hills, on the Glera slopes that had supplied local sparkling wine for generations. The family still runs it, and the whole range is built on the same method: second fermentation in pressurised stainless steel, with extended time on the lees to add texture.
Extra Dry is the confusing name in Prosecco, and the one most often misread. It is sweeter than Brut, not drier — the terms date from an era when Champagne was made far sweeter than it is now, and the scale never reset. In practice that means roughly twelve to seventeen grams of residual sugar per litre, enough to round the wine's edges and lift the pear and white-flower character of Glera without ever reading as a dessert wine. It is the historic Prosecco style and still the one most widely drunk in the Veneto itself, where it is poured as an aperitif rather than analysed.
