Val d'Oca - A pioneering Prosecco Superiore cooperative

Promotion

With its collaboration of 600 winegrowers and 1,000 hectares of vineyard, Val d’Oca’s commitment to the region of Prosecco Superiore – both its people and its outstanding landscape – shines through in its outstanding wines. Guided but not constrained by tradition, the winery keeps pace with the times, representing the best of Prosecco in a diverse range of styles.

Central to the Val d’Oca ethos is a long-lasting, symbiotic relationship with its winegrowers. The winery offers a hands-on approach, to help maintain rigorous standards of grape quality by supporting growers year-round. Some of that support comes in the form of educational courses – offered in the classroom, online and in the vineyard – that focus on various aspects of vineyard management. The result of these collective efforts are grapes of the best quality, for which naturally, fair payment is made.

Responsibility for the future

Recognising the value of working in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way, Val d’Oca’s winery – built in 2011 – follows the principles of bio-architecture, using recycled materials wherever possible. Maintaining environmental consciousness, the winery sends grape stalks to a cogeneration plant to generate renewable energy, and the resulting marc (obtained from the distillation of pressed and fermented skins, seeds and stalks to produce a wine must) is reused in distillation. These constructive steps are indicative of the guiding principles that are at the heart of every decision made at Val d’Oca – highlighting how much the winery values its social and environmental impact.

Exploring the Val d’Oca range

The impressive size of Val d’Oca vineyard collective means that it can produce Prosecco from all three denominations – Asolo DOCG, Conegliano Valdobbiadene DOCG and Prosecco DOC – and in all styles too, from Extra Brut to Brut, Extra Dry and Dry. The Val d’Oca portfolio has every taste, occasion and budget catered for.

Il Cartizze DOCG – Something extra special

The highly prized vineyards of Cartizze are planted on the precariously steep hillsides between San Pietro di Barbozza, Santo Stefano and Saccol in Valdobbiadene. Considered to be Prosecco’s ‘grand cru’ land, it is amongst the most expensive in the region. There are just over 140 individual land-owners fortunate enough to call a vineyard in Cartizze their own.

In Cartizze, nature has delivered a near-perfect oasis for vine growing. The 108 hectares of vineyard sit between 230 and 320 metres above sea level, where Alpine breezes keep humidity at bay, offering fresh reprieve from the summer heat. With a southerly exposure, vines bask all day-long in the sun, maximising grape ripeness and flavour and soils are composed of clay, moraines and sandstone, formed in ridges that provide excellent natural drainage.

Like many of the vineyards in the DOCG region, the steep gradient of these vineyards means that they are tended manually and over the course of the year, a grower will spend 800 hours per hectare in a Cartizze vineyard, in contrast to an average of 150 hours per hectare in a mechanised plot. In recognition of the superiority of the grapes that are harvested here, permitted yields are lower than elsewhere in the region, and the number of bottles produced is also strictly limited.

It’s easy to see why Cartizze wines are fabled for being amongst the most aromatic, characterful and elegant in the Prosecco Superiore region. Working with several growers in the region, who own 14 hectares between them, Val d’Oca considers its Cartizze wines to be its ‘most precious gems’.