There is a beautifully quiet corner of north-east Italy, the landscape punctuated by sleepy hamlets and sweeping hills that climb into the distant green Dolomites vaulting over the horizon. It is a suitably glamorous place for one of the biggest models on the planet to find one of the world’s great wines. The model? Cara Delevingne. The wine? Cartizze. And for those put off Prosecco after years of acrid supermarket plonk, this might be the Italian fizz to get back into bed with. And, if you want to be ahead of the curve, it’s the thing to serve this summer.
Cartizze — that’s car-teets-eh out loud — is shorthand for this wine, which is the pinnacle of Prosecco, but it’s also a sub-region within Valdobbiadene, Vento. Stay with me. Totalling a little over 105 hectares, this is hallowed ground in Italian viticulture, the primest of prime real estate. Only 125 or so vineyards manage the territory, producing around 1.2 million bottles per year. Sounds a lot? Not compared with the near-700 million bottles of total annual Prosecco output.
