Strada del Prosecco Historical Timeline

Origins

The route was formalised in 1966 as the Strada del Vino Bianco, the first wine road in Italy -- an idea since copied across the country and beyond.

Turning points

It linked producers who had until then sold in bulk, and gave the Conegliano-Valdobbiadene name a geography that visitors could actually travel.

Influential people

The Scuola Enologica at Conegliano supplied much of the technical expertise behind the growers along it, which is why quality is unusually consistent across many very small estates.

Cultural evolution

DOC status came in 1969 and DOCG -- Italy's highest -- in 2009, separating these hillside wines from the far larger volume of flat-land Prosecco produced elsewhere in the Veneto and Friuli.

Present-day significance

In 2019 UNESCO inscribed Le Colline del Prosecco di Conegliano e Valdobbiadene as a cultural landscape, citing the hand-cut terraces rather than the wine.