Bele Casel

Not Luca and Paola Ferraro, whose Bele Casel serves up exceptionally vivid reminders of why Prosecco—real Prosecco—shines brightest on its own, at the dinner table or as an elegant aperitif. The brother and sister are third-generation stewards of prized vineyards in the heart of Asolo, a village nestled in the foothills of the Dolomites. “Our hills jut out of the landscape as if they had exploded from the valley floor,” they say—and they’ve got the calf muscles to prove it. The slopes here verge on 45 degrees, and the siblings have been part of the family enterprise since they were kids hand-pasting labels onto bottles in the tiny cellar.

The original land belonged to their grandfather Ilariobut the dream started with their parents, Danilo and Antonella, who worked tirelessly beginning in the late 1970s to pivot from selling Glera and Malvasia in demijohns to bottling the kind of Prosecco that can only be achieved in Asolo and neighboring Conegliano Valdobbiadene, two tiny Pre-Alpine strips within the sprawling Prosecco DOC. “Every day, after finishing their day jobs, they would go down in the cellar to try and consolidate, day after day, their efforts and sacrifices,” Luca and Paola recall.

It was painstaking, even quixotic, work, but little by little their craft caught up with their ambition. When we first met them, their winery was about the size of a two-car garage—and it was making the best Prosecco we’d ever tasted. Luca and Paola have taken that legacy even further. It starts with their reverence for the land, where double-arched canes of Glera, BianchettaTrevigiana, Perera, Rabbiosa, and Marzemina Bianca rise from varied soils of grey marl, limestone, and iron-rich red clay. “Our father has always refused to use chemical products that could change or ruin his wines,” they say. “We apply the same principle in the vineyards because we believe that quality is born out of respect for what nature has given us.”

And these vineyards are alive. Between rows treated with green manure, earthworms wriggle among speckled-green blackbird eggs and pheasants flush at the sight of snakes. Wild boar dig through clay clods streaked with calcareous white, occasionally unearthing the spiraling shells of bygone snails. Old traditions endure as well, like chestnuts roasting in metal skillets over open flames—rewards for autumn work that cakes boot treads with monstrous mounds of clay.

The fruit of all these labors is pure and pretty, marked by palpable minerality and persistent creamy mousses. The Asolo Extra Dry Superiore, from iron-rich red-clay parcels around Cornuda, abounds with notes of pear and ginger graced with nuts after a Martinotti-method vinification featuring 7 months of lees contact in stainless steel. The Asolo Vecchie Uve, meanwhile, gets a full 16 months on the lees—fostering a profound expression of the 50-year-old vines in the Ferraros’ Monfuma vineyard, “the jewel of our estate.” Spiced apples play against sour citrus in this chiseled, eminently age-worthy bottling.

Luca’s openness to experimentation is evident in the ColFondo cuvée. The difference is telegraphed by the name, which translates to “with the bottom”—meaning the lees, which remain in the bottle after a secondary fermentation resembling the Champagne method, only without disgorgement. A little cloudy by design, this offering gains complexity with time in the glass, unfurling botanical aromatics from a zingy, lemony palate framed by stone. It’s an atypical approach and a departure from what most people expect from Prosecco.

But even if you prefer their more classical bottlings, that is precisely what Bele Casel is all about. Changing what the majority of people expect from Prosecco is their singular mission—and what gives each of theirwines a singular soul.