Brand story
Zardetto Prosecco Brut
Zardetto is a Conegliano house, and the town matters: it is home to Italy’s first school of oenology, founded in 1876, and it sits at the eastern end of the Conegliano Valdobbiadene hills where Glera has been grown for centuries. Pino Zardetto trained at that school before establishing the winery under the family name in 1969, betting his business on sparkling wine at a time when Prosecco was still a local drink rather than an international one. The house is now run by the following generation of the family, and has stayed focused on one thing throughout: sparkling wine from Glera.
The wine is made by the Charmat or Martinotti method, in which the second fermentation takes place in pressurised stainless steel rather than in bottle. Where the traditional method builds bready, autolytic complexity, this approach sets out to protect the grape’s own aroma — and Zardetto extends the time on the tank lees to add texture without trading away that freshness. Prosecco DOC itself was given legal shape in 2009, drawn across nine provinces of the Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia, with Conegliano Valdobbiadene promoted to DOCG for its steep hillside sites. A Brut carries under 12 grams of residual sugar per litre and is made to be drunk young and cold: light, floral and immediate, a sparkling wine of freshness rather than age.
