Vineyards are everywhere in Italy. The vineyard surface is as large as France – around 800 000 hectares – but the country is very much smaller. In contrast to France, Italy have vineyards in all its regions. Since quite some time now, the largest wine production region is Veneto in the northeast part of the country.
It produces around 9 million hectolitres of wine. Of this 2.2 million is DOP Prosecco. This makes it the largest DOP in Italy. The Prosecco grape Glera has increased by almost 60% since 2000. Now it is grown on 19,500 hectares.
Conegliano Valdobbiadene DOCG is a separate appellation in Veneto making Prosecco, with a production of 588 000 hectolitres. Soave has Veneto’s – and Italy’s – largest production of white, still appellation wines (489,500 hectolitres).
The world-famous red wines of Veneto has a somewhat smaller production: Valpolicella with around 165 000 hl, Valpolicella Ripasso, around 170 000 hl and Amarone della Valpolicella, around 100 000 hl. And we must not forget the reds from Bardolino and the delicious sweet Recioto wines.
With this large variety of wines, it is not difficult to have a dinner with only wines from Veneto!
