Thanks to Andrew O’Hagan’s new novel, London’s Caledonian Road is currently multitasking as a literary metaphor. But amid the real shops you’ll find AperiDeli, where occasionally locals – myself included – drop by alongside thoroughly Italian packets of pasta for cheerfully informal wine tastings. At one of them I attended, owner Stefano Cossalter started with a delicious sparkling rosé. Fantastic, I thought, until I saw the £25 price tag.
A few months later I found myself 800 miles away from the source, staying at the ivy-covered, infinitely charming L’Albereta. This 53-room boutique hotel, part of Relais & Châteaux, is located near the town of Ebrusco in Lombardy, between Milan and the border with Switzerland. The vast majority of my fellow guests were Italian; the only other British guests were there for their cousin’s wedding.
I clocked them both as I admired the fine bubbles of my glass of Bellavista Franciacorta and the way the sun shone through both the palm and pine trees on the terrace of Stanza 54, the hotel’s bar. “Unlike Champagne, you definitely get a view here,” said one of them. He wasn’t wrong. In the distance lay the snow-capped Monte Guglielmo and then the deep blue of Lake Iseo, while in the foreground stood rows of vines, their buds unfurling to begin a long journey to my glass.
Warm and slightly eccentric, L’Albereta was once a hunting lodge, parts of which date back to the 19th century. It is full of pattern and verve, with gardens that combine sculptures and roses in abundance. Completely Italian dishes – carpaccio, gnocchi with radicchio, lamb with small artichokes – come from LeoneFelice, the Michelin-starred restaurant, recently led by young chef Fabio Abbattista.
On this hill lies the aptly named Bellavista vineyard; both the hotel and winery are owned by Vittorio Moretti, one of the leading names in Franciacorta wine. A 15 minute walk through the vineyards and forests and you reach the winery area where the cellars were created by digging deep into the hills to create the right temperature and humidity. Approximately six million bottles are stored here, each of which is rotated 360 degrees by hand to ensure the best fermentation.
Unlike prosecco, which generally moves quickly from tank to bottle and then to the supermarket, Franciacorta wine is aged, first in oak barrels and then in bottles, for a minimum of 18 months and a maximum of six or seven years for the Riserva- categories. Prosecco uses the glera grape, while Franciacorta wine uses pinot nero, pinot bianco and chardonnay (or satèn as it is called here), fermenting them in the classic method way – like champagne. Champagne produces around 300 million bottles of its namesake bubbles a year, Franciacorta only 20 million – and the vast majority are drunk in Italy. The prices are – in general – approximately in line with those of champagne. You can buy cheap bottles of Franciacorta in the supermarket for about 15 euros, while the most expensive ones run into the hundreds.
It only takes about an hour to reach Franciacorta from Milan by car and in recent years the area has become a weekend getaway for discerning Milanese. Which in turn has spawned an increasing number of boutique hotels, restaurants and enotecas. September now also features an annual Franciacorta Festival where the harvest is rounded off with parties, music (DJs for the cooler wineries; jazz for the more mainstream) and especially food.
At the end of last year, Ca’ del Bosco, one of Franciacorta’s oldest and most prestigious wineries, opened a striking new building designed by Gabriele Falconi that regularly organizes guided tours. More and more wineries in the region are offering a combination of tours and tastings, including Contadi Castaldi, where for 30 euros you can tour the winery, taste three different wines, nibble snacks and ask questions. “What about using Franciacorta with Aperol?”, I decided to ask the head winemaker Gian Luca Uccelli. His fine Italian manners wavered for a moment. “We’d rather you didn’t,” he said after a somewhat awkward silence.
There are also walking and cycling routes between the vineyards (e-bikes are available if you want to minimize the effort). What you won’t find are the old cellars you encounter in Reims. In many cases, Franciacorta’s wineries are housed in industrial buildings (Contadi Castaldi uses a former foundry). Yet there’s plenty of history in the lakeside town of Iseo, a 20-minute drive from L’Albereta, where pastel-colored buildings and passiagataleisurely walks along the waterfront contrast with 12th-century churches and Roman remains and courtyards. In summer Iseo has lidos and other swimming areas, while foot passenger ferries run to Monte Isola in the middle of the lake (population 1,800, along with some very nice restaurants).
The first bottle of Franciacorta was produced in 1961 and the production area is only 3,000 hectares, but vineyards seem to cover every inch of available land. Unlike the limestone-based terroir of Champagne, Franciacorta has six different subsoils, thanks to a nifty glacial action some two million years ago. And the taste difference? Having tasted my way through three different producers and nine different Franciacortas, Champagne, if it has a biscuit-like acidity, is mellower, even though its sugar levels are generally lower than those of Champagne, and much lower than those of Prosecco. Despite the pleasant minerality, there is a sense of generosity that suits the warmer temperatures of the region and yes, I understand – after my very diligent research – exactly why Italians are reluctant to let too much Franciacorta leave the coast.
However, Italians, who make up the vast majority of visitors to Franciacorta, often flock to their country’s coast and islands in the summer and as a result hotel prices do not rise. And because the harvest is gathered around August – with farmers on workhorse tractors transporting the grapes to local wineries for pressing – the pace of life is generally slow.
Franciacorta feels like everything we Brits would want from a wine getaway. It’s even wonderfully easy to get to: Milan Bergamo, served by Ryanair, is just a 30-minute drive from Ebrusco. However, I opted for the more distant Milan Linate airport. Why? Because Milan Linate no longer has any liquid restrictions, I was able to return to the Caledonian Road with a nice collection of bottles in my hand luggage.
Essentials
Sarah Turner was a guest at L’Albereta (00 39 030 776 0550; albereta.it), which offers double prices from €360, including breakfast.