Wine tours
Two cellar visits with tastings, lunch at a third winery and the giant bench of Borgonato, with a car and driver from Milan, Bergamo, Brescia or Iseo.
From €1,050 per groupVAT and fees included
Plan your tourThe hills between Lake Iseo and Brescia where Franciacorta is made: a sparkling wine that ferments a second time in its own bottle.
Every bottle rests on its lees for at least 18 months before it is sold, 30 for a vintage and 60 for a riserva.
In 19 villages between the shore of Lake Iseo and Brescia, where vineyards cover almost a fifth of the land.
Iseo, on the lake's southern shore, is one of Franciacorta's villages; Monte Isola, the largest lake island in Italy, rises in the middle of the lake.
The name first appears in 1277, as Franzacurta, in the statutes of Brescia: it probably comes from curtes francae, the monasteries' lands free of taxes.
Franciacorta wine tour: the wine, the wineries and the dayIn 1570 a doctor from Brescia, Girolamo Conforti, published a short treatise on the area's sparkling wine, the vino mordace.
Franciacorta wine tour: the wine, the wineries and the dayThe first Franciacorta was bottled in 1961 at Borgonato: 3,000 bottles of Pinot di Franciacorta made by Franco Ziliani for Guido Berlucchi.
Franciacorta wine tour: the wine, the wineries and the dayIn 1995 Franciacorta became the first Italian wine made by a second fermentation in the bottle to be a DOCG.
Franciacorta wine tour: the wine, the wineries and the daySince 2002 the wine has been called simply Franciacorta: one word for the place, the method and the wine.
Franciacorta wine tour: the wine, the wineries and the daySatèn, a style of Franciacorta's own, is made only from white grapes, Chardonnay and Pinot Bianco, and only as a Brut.
Franciacorta wine tour: the wine, the wineries and the day
