Conegliano Discovery Guide

Conegliano is the working capital of Prosecco, and that is a different thing from a wine-tourism town. The Scuola Enologica, founded in 1876 as Italy's first school of oenology, still trains winemakers who go on to work across the country -- so the place has the feel of somewhere that produces expertise rather than sells experiences.

The town itself is prettier than it needs to be. Via XX Settembre runs the length of the historic centre under continuous arcades, lined with Gothic and Venetian palace fronts still carrying fragments of their frescoes, and the castle hill above gives you the whole vineyard landscape at once.

And it produced a painter. Cima da Conegliano was among the finest of the Venetian Renaissance, and his altarpiece still hangs in the cathedral he painted it for -- with the same hills visible in its background as the ones outside the door.

If you travel slowly: two nights lets you give a day to the town and a day to the hills. Conegliano is a far cheaper and more practical base than the villages along the ridge, and the train connects it to Treviso and Venice.

If you want the essentials: Via XX Settembre end to end, the Duomo for the Cima altarpiece and the Sala dei Battuti above its portico, then the walk up to the castle. That is a comfortable half day.

If you're after local character: the osterie in the old centre serve Prosecco by the glass as an everyday drink rather than an occasion -- flat, dry and local, nothing like the sweet sparkling wine the name suggests abroad.

If you want to go past the obvious: take the ridge road west toward Valdobbiadene rather than the valley road. It climbs through Rua, Col San Martino and Santo Stefano, and the terraced slopes on either side are the actual UNESCO landscape.

The Prosecco hills are a UNESCO cultural landscape, and the thing being protected is farming practice rather than scenery. The ciglioni -- grassy terraces cut into slopes too steep for machinery -- are what earned the inscription, and they exist only because growers still maintain them by hand. Buying from small producers on those slopes rather than from the flat industrial vineyards south of town is the most direct support a visitor can give.

That steepness is also the problem. These are among the most demanding vineyards in Europe to work, and the pressure to replant them flat, or abandon them, is constant. Prosecco's commercial success has cut both ways.

The Strada del Prosecco, Italy's first wine road, was laid out in 1966 along the ridge to Valdobbiadene. It is narrow, and it now carries far more traffic than it was built for -- cycling it, or driving it outside summer weekends, makes a real difference to the villages along it.

Tastings are best booked. Many of the good cellars are small family operations where an unannounced group genuinely disrupts the working day.

September and October are the best months by a distance. The vendemmia runs through them, the hills are working rather than posing, and the light on the terraces is at its best.

April to June is the other good window: mild, green, and quiet enough that cellars have time for you.

Summer is hot and humid on the plain, though the hills stay a few degrees cooler. August is when the town itself empties and a good share of restaurants close.

Winter is cold and foggy, and the vineyards are bare. The town's own sights -- the Duomo, the Sala dei Battuti, the castle museum -- are indoors and unaffected, and it is the cheapest time to come.

What a visitor actually spends in Conegliano

Conegliano is cheaper than the hill villages themselves, which price for the wine trade. A cellar tasting here costs a fraction of what an equivalent one does in more famous Italian wine country.