The Prosecco Hills: A UNESCO Landscape in the Glass

An hour north of Venice, the Prosecco Hills rise in vine-striped terraces that no machine can work. The wine made here — tasted at source, in the specific vineyard that produced it — is something quite unlike the version of its name that travels the world.

The UNESCO inscription of 2019 recognised something that the producers of the Conegliano Valdobbiadene zone have always understood: that these hills are not merely a wine region but a cultural landscape of the first order, shaped over three centuries by the particular demands of slopes too steep and too irregular for anything but human hands. Fifteen communes stretch from Conegliano in the east to Valdobbiadene in the west across a terrain of limestone and clay and glacial moraine whose gradients routinely exceed thirty degrees.

Every vine here is planted, pruned, treated and harvested on foot, by people whose parents and grandparents and great-grandparents did the same thing on the same hillside. That continuity is visible in the landscape and audible in the wine.

We begin our Prosecco Hills itinerary in Conegliano — a town of quiet Venetian elegance whose sixteenth-century loggia and oenological school (Italy's oldest, founded in 1876, still training the winemakers of the region today) provide the historical context for everything that follows.

From Conegliano, the wine road climbs westward through a succession of ridge-top villages — Col San Martino, Santo Stefano, San Pietro di Barbozza — each with its own geological character, its own producers and its own expression of the Glera grape that is the foundation of Prosecco Superiore DOCG.

Cartizze: The Grand Cru of the Hills

At the heart of the Valdobbiadene subzone, the hill of Cartizze stands apart in every sense. One hundred and seven hectares of glacial moraine soils, south-facing at a consistent angle that maximises sun exposure throughout the season, owned by a tight group of families whose combined vineyard area averages less than one hectare per producer — Cartizze produces a Prosecco Superiore of richness, aromatic complexity and structural depth that commands a price multiple well above the appellation average and justifies every centesimo of it.

We arrange visits to the finest Cartizze producers for tastings conducted not in a reception room but in the vineyard itself, standing among the specific vines that produced the wine in your glass, with the Valdobbiadene valley falling away below and the Dolomite outline visible to the north on clear days. It is among the most direct and uncomplicated expressions of what wine tourism, at its best, should feel like.

The Rive: Single-Village Wines and the New Intelligence

The introduction of the Rive designation — applied to wines from a single named village or vineyard, hand-harvested, vintage-dated and released with the place name on the label — has transformed the critical conversation around Prosecco Superiore in ways that were not anticipated when the category was created in 2009. Comparative tastings of Rive wines from different communes in the same vintage — one from Valdobbiadene, one from Santo Stefano, one from Col San Martino — demonstrate with immediate clarity the differences that geology and microclimate produce in a grape variety whose aromatic profile is sometimes considered too consistent for such distinctions.

We design these comparative tastings with the producers whose commitment to terroir expression has made them the most interesting voices in the current Prosecco conversation, and whose estates are among the most architecturally beautiful in the zone.

The Combination That No Other Region Offers

The Prosecco Hills occupy a position of extraordinary geographical privilege: Venice is ninety minutes to the south, the Dolomites are two hours to the north, and the Palladian villas of the Veneto plain are scattered at thirty-minute intervals in every direction. We design extended itineraries that use the Treviso Marca as their centre of gravity and move outward to each of these territories according to the client's interests and pace. A week that combines two days in the Prosecco Hills, two days in Venice and two days in the Dolomites — with the wine, the art and the mountain landscape in constant productive conversation — is one of the most varied and most satisfying Italian itineraries we design, and one that is available nowhere else in Europe in so compact a geography.

The Rive of Cartizze and the Prosecco served in airport departure lounges share a grape variety and a name. The difference between them is worth a journey to the Veneto to understand.

The Essentials

Best season: September for harvest; April–May for flowering vines and clear Dolomite views

Signature experience: Rive comparative tasting with a Cartizze producer, conducted in the vineyard

Stay: Boutique hotels in Conegliano or Valdobbiadene; or Venice (90 min south)

Combine with: Venice, Treviso's Palladian villas, Verona, or the Dolomites

Every journey we design is entirely bespoke — crafted around your preferences,your pace, and your desire for the exceptional.

Begin Your Journey