Franciacorta Tasting - Italy's Answer to Champagne

5 wines to taste froma cross the region For lovers of Champagne and other high-quality fizz, Franciacorta is a region and wine style well-worth exploring. On Saturday November 28th, we open 5 wines to taste in your own time. Come anytime between 1-3pm to be taken through the lineup. Bellavista Alma' Franciacorta Gran Cuvee Brut NV $95 Ca' Del Bosco Cuvee Prestige Franciacorta NV $90 Alessandra Divella Blanc de Blancs Franciacorta 2022 $140 Cherubini 'Sui Generis' Franciacorta NV $88 Enrico Gatti Franciacorta Brut NV $85 Located in the north of Italy’s Lombardy region, Franciacorta is known to produce Italy most complex and classy sparkling wine. There are numerous reasons for direct comparisons to Champagne, with quality, most importantly, being one of them. Prices on the other hand, can often be cheaper. While I personally love Champagne and drink it regularly, it can be an expensive habit. Exploring the vast number of grower-producers across France’s most famous region can be exciting, with the quality of wine produced there seemingly getting better and better, with vast differences of style and expression across the region. So when I spent some time in Italy halfway through this year, I took the chance to explore Italy’s answer to Champagne. Franciacorta is made in the same way as its more famous French equivalent, using method Champenoise (otherwise known as classic method or traditional method). It involves second fermentation taking place in bottle and then having the wine age on its lees (dead yeast cells) for an extended period of time. This lees aging brings depth, body, mouthfeel and complexity. Grape varieties permitted are also similar. In Franciacorta, Chardonnay, Pinot Nero (Pinot Noir) and Pinot Bianco (Pinot Blanc) are most commonly used – all of which are permitted in Champagne. Whilst further comparisons can be made, some significant differences exist, too. Champagne as a region produces 14 times as much wine as Franciacorta (266 million bottles in 2025, compared to 19 million bottles in Franciacorta). To put that in perspective, Moet & Chandon produces about 50% more wine themselves than the whole of Franciacorta combined. Marketing budgets span from typically modest and domestically-focused in Italy to multi-million dollar global campaigns for French houses. The ‘brand’ of Champagne is one that extends beyond wine and into luxury and lifestyle, while Franciacorta remains relatively unknown. For these reasons, Franciacorta exists as the value-buy when talking about serious sparkling wine. While these are not cheap wines, your dollar does go further here than it typically would in Champagne. But how do the wines of Franciacorta taste? Naturally, despite the region being quite small, there is significant variation of style from producer to producer. Some seem to be chasing that particularly rich and round style with significant autolytic character (toasty, brioche-y richness that comes from time spent on lees) and a soft, round mouthfeel, sometimes aided by dosage. Others aim for something more chiselled and precise, relying more on fruit ripeness to bring flavour and weight rather than on winemaking techniques. The best have citrus freshness but with concentration: think flavours of lemon balm, confected lime and buttered pastry. Franciacorta’s largest obstacle in terms of reaching more customers is, and probably always will be, the power of Champagne as a brand. We see it at Five Ways all the time (and it’s a similar hurdle faced by many Australian sparkling wine producers): many consumers seem to question why they would pay $80-ish dollars for little-known Franciacorta when they can buy a bottle of Moet or Veuve Clicquot for the same price. For this reason, very little Franciacorta is imported into Australia – there just isn’t demand for it. From my recent trip to Italy, some producers that really stood out for me included Andre Arici, Sullali and Monte Rossa however none of these are brought into the country. Fortunately, some great producers are on our shores and we offer them here: Alessandra Divella, Enrico Gatti and Cherubini all notable producers, while much more recognisable Ca’ del Bosco remains a benchmark for the region. Bellavista, also very worthy of a mention, makes very good wines in that slightly softer and rounder style that I mentioned earlier. If you have an interest in what lies beyond the boundaries of Champagne, look to the hills of Lombardy. Here you are much more likely to land on a genuinely hand-crafted small-scale wine that sings of its region and expands your horizons beyond the typically commercially driven slopes of Champagne. – Ches Cook, Five Way Cellars.