Valdobbiadene Discovery Guide

This is the steep end of Prosecco. Where Conegliano is a town with hills nearby, Valdobbiadene is inside them -- the slopes rise directly behind the main square, and the villages of San Pietro di Barbozza, Santo Stefano and Saccol sit among vineyards pitched at angles no machine can work.

Cartizze is the reason wine people come. Roughly 107 hectares shared between more than a hundred owners, it is Italy's most expensive vineyard land, and the difference between a Cartizze and an ordinary Prosecco is large enough to be worth tasting side by side.

What makes it a destination rather than an errand is the landscape. The UNESCO citation is for the ciglioni, grass terraces cut by hand into 30-degree slopes, and the view from the ridge above Santo Stefano over that ribbed hillside is the image the whole appellation trades on.

If you travel slowly: stay two nights in one of the hillside hamlets rather than in the town. The difference between sleeping among the terraces and driving up to them each morning is most of the experience.

If you want the essentials: the Cartizze loop -- San Pietro di Barbozza, Santo Stefano, Saccol -- takes an afternoon by car or a hard couple of hours by bike, and covers the best of the landscape and several cellars.

If you're after local character: the Osteria senza Oste above Santo Stefano is an unstaffed hut where you help yourself to wine and salami and leave money in a box. It is not a gimmick -- it works, and it says a good deal about the place.

If you want to go past the obvious: walk a section of the marked paths through the terraces rather than driving the ridge. On foot the scale of the hand-work becomes obvious in a way it never does from a car window.

Valdobbiadene has the sharpest version of the problem the whole DOCG faces. Prosecco's commercial success has made this land extraordinarily valuable, and the pressure runs in two directions at once: to plant every available slope, and to abandon the steepest terraces because they cannot be worked economically by hand.

The ciglioni are what UNESCO listed, and they exist only while someone maintains them. Buying Rive or Cartizze bottlings -- wines from named steep slopes rather than from the flat land south of the hills -- is the most direct way a visitor keeps that labour viable.

Monoculture is the counter-argument, and it is a real one. Vines now cover slopes that carried mixed farming and woodland within living memory, with consequences for erosion, water and pesticide load that local campaigns have pressed hard on.

Practically: book cellar visits, and do not drive into the vineyard tracks. They are private, single-width, and used by tractors.

September and October are the best time by a clear margin: harvest on the steep slopes is done entirely by hand, and the hills are full of people working.

Late April to June is the other good window -- green, mild, and the season of the Primavera del Prosecco festivals that rotate through the villages.

Summer is warm and busy, with weekend traffic on roads not built for it. The hills stay cooler than the plain, but August is when many small producers close.

Winter is cold and quiet, and the vines are bare -- though the terrace structure is at its most legible then, and cellars have all the time in the world for you.

What a visitor actually spends in Valdobbiadene

Wine is the one thing that costs more here than in Conegliano -- a Cartizze bottle starts around 25-30 EUR at the cellar. Accommodation in the hamlets is often better value than in the town itself.