Croatia has submitted an application to the European Commission for registration of the traditional term Prosec, awkward translation of the Italian term Prosecco, denoting the sparkling wine productions that have been enjoying worldwide success for years, with 500 million bottles produced in North-Eastern Italy.

As a demonstration of how the Prosecco grape variety has very different origins than the Dalmatian ones declared by Zagreb, we share the essay by Fulvio Colombo “Stories of wines from the Adriatic. new investigations into the relationships between Prosecco and Dalmatian Prošek” published in “La Ricerca. Bollettino del Centro di Ricerche Storiche di Rovigno”, n. 65, June 2014, pp. 11-13

One of the areas of recent research on the history of Prosecco directly concerns the Dalmatian area due to the presence in the documentation of the Adriatic region of citations regarding wines with similar or even coinciding names1. Despite the presence of these references, it has always been claimed, both on the Italian and Croatian sides, that there is not and has never been any relationship between Prosecco and Dalmatian Prošek, given the current characteristics of the two wines: the first is produced mostly in a sparkling version from a white grape variety that until a few years ago had the same name (historically traceable without difficulty to the town of Prosecco, in the province of Trieste), the second is a sweet wine with a higher alcohol content, a dessert wine, produced from dried grapes of both white and black grapes (depending on the production location), considered indigenous because it has been produced in the region since time immemorial. However, having established, on the basis of new investigations, that Prosecco once had different characteristics2, it will be appropriate to proceed with a comprehensive check, to understand whether today's differences, both in name and appearance, are confirmed by Dalmatian historical documentation. For Prošek, research quickly runs out, given the lack of data of a certain antiquity3, which on the contrary are particularly abundant for Prosecco. According to the current state of knowledge, the oldest mention of a wine called Prosecco in Dalmatia is related to the town of Almissa, today's Omiš. In the Journey to Dalmatia by the Paduan abbot Alberto Fortis, from 1774, the reference is precise and the graphic correspondence absolute: “The Territory of Almissa … Although it is not cultivated with much intelligence, it produces exquisite wine: and the quality of the land overcomes the poor cultivation. Moscadello, and the old Prosecco from Almissa, and generally all the wine that is made there with diligence from well-ripened and rested grapes, deserves to have a place at any banquet.”4. This quotation, already quite significant, is confirmed by a second one from 1780 referring to the wine of that locality: “The one from Almissa is sought after, but much more so are the liqueurs that distinguish that town, Moscato and Proccecho”5 and by a third one from 1817: “Almissa, a small but strong city. Its territory is mountainous, and produces excellent wines, called prosseco”6. The news is not limited to this location, however, because even in Ragusa, now Dubrovnik, further south, there was a variant of Prosecco, documented at least since 1802: “The people of Ragusa abound in excellent liqueurs. Their Malvasia, the Prosecco called Pecenno, the Cesviniza of Stagno, the Muscat of Lagosta, can compete with the best wines of Europe”7. These data are now sufficient to define the characteristics of the Dalmatian product: not a common wine, but using the categories of the time, a “liquor”, so defined due to its higher alcohol content and high sugar content, produced from well-ripened and “rested” grapes: a wine, therefore, very similar at first glance to today's Prošek. At the time, however, the Prosecco produced in Trieste, in the Gorizia area and in the Veneto region also had the same characteristics8 and therefore the attempt to establish what the possible connections between the two wines might be seems more than legitimate. Looking through the Trieste documentation, older than that regarding the other areas, the solution could already be obvious, but wanting to give the investigation a semblance of scientificity it will be necessary to deepen the research for Dalmatia to find new points of contact and interpretative solutions. In 1844 the well-known English Egyptologist Sir John Gardner Wilkinson visited the region and a few years later in 1848 he published in London his memoirs of that journey in the work Dalmatia and Montenegro: With a Journey to Mostar in Herzegovina and Remarks on the Slavonic Nations. A passage from the work turns out to be quite important for us: “Dalmatia produces many wines, which are strong and full bodied; but most of them have the fault of being sweet, owing to the grapes remaining too long upon the vines, before they are gathered for pressing. It is from this that they have received the name of Prosecco”9 . The last statement is really significant: “It is from this that they have received the name of Prosecco” (it is from this that they have received the name of Prosecco). So similarly to what is known for Trieste, where this winemaking method was the only characterising element that distinguished the true Prosecco from attempts at imitation (a procedure codified in the proto-disciplinary of 171510), also in Dalmatia it did not refer to a particular wine, but to wines produced with grapes remaining too long upon the vines before being harvested and pressed. Further confirmation of the “synonymous” function of the term “Prosecco” in the Adriatic region is the clear 1878 quote from a Parisian journalist and traveler, Charle Yriarte, a profound connoisseur of Dalmatian realities: “Dalmatia is very rich in wines; it has a good selection of wines, especially Prosecco, the general term for designating sweet wines”11; which in the Italian edition of 1883 is translated as: “Dalmatia is very rich in wines: there are many types, including Prosecco, a general term for designating sweet wines”12. A winemaking method that has thus become a synonym for general use; this detail can also explain the uncertainty about the denomination of Dalmatian wine products in the mid-nineteenth century, as we will see. In 1857 Franz Petter, a professor at the Split Gymnasium and author of an accurate German guide to Dalmatia, in the chapter dedicated to vines and wine, listed the products of the region, citing “Der Prosecco oder Moscato” from Sebenico, the Prosecco from Brazza, that from Lesina and from Sabbioncello, but speaking of Almissa he only mentioned the “Vino Moscato, Marzemino und Vugava”13. A few years later, however, in Wilhelm Hamm's Wienbuch, the same locality is mentioned as "Prosecco oder Moscato di Rosa von Almissa und der Insel Crappano", thus combining the two denominations into a single product14. After the initial uncertainties at the end of the eighteenth century, regarding the spelling, the name of the wine then stabilized unequivocally in the current form "prosecco" giving rise to a considerable amount of documentation in Italian, German, French and English, which I cannot explain here. Significant was the presence at the “Wine Fair”, held in Trieste in 1888, of three Dalmatian Proseccos from the Sarich brothers from Terstenik (Trstenik in the Sabbioncello-Pelješac peninsula), awarded with the “State Silver Medal”, two of which were classified as “Prosecco fino” and the other as “Prosecco comune” alongside local products of the same name15, proving that those wines did not need any geographical characterisation to be classified as such. One last interesting consideration: even in Dalmatia, although later than the first mention in Trieste in 182116, wine is transformed to adapt to the fashions of the moment and market demands. In 1892 a “Prosecco spumante d'Almissa” is mentioned which “enjoys European fame”17 and the evolution of the product is also confirmed in the 1899 German guide by Reinhard E. Petermann, the Illustrirter Fürer durch Dalmatien, where the “moussierende Prosecco” is cited as a product of excellence from Almissa, i.e. the sparkling version next to the “Moscato Rosa” which instead retains its characteristics unchanged: “Allerdings sind die Almissaner Weine, voran der moussierende Prosecco, der nur in dieser Gegend gedeiht, und der durch angenehmen Rosengeschmack ausgezeichnete Moscato Rosa”18. News also taken up in the French translation of 1900 in which the wine is properly called “Prosecco mousseux”: “le riverains préfèrent cultiver la vigne qui vient à merveille et qui produit deux excellentes espèces de vin: le Prosecco mousseux et le Moscato rosa, ainsi appealed to because of the comic's resemblance to the odour of the feuille de roses”19. The absence of topographical references to a place of origin for the current Prošek, given the dispersion of attestations over a very vast area and the bizarre attempts to try to explain the meaning of the word, referring to wine, support the hypothesis that it is, for Dalmatia, an imported term and that the link with the Prosecco from Trieste, on the basis of the information given above, is absolutely not coincidental. How did fashion arrive in Dalmatia? The reference to Venice at this point seems obvious and given the presence on the market of the lagoon city of fine wines with this name already in the seventeenth century, it is certainly in this direction that future investigations should be directed, still far from being concluded. It therefore seems evident that in Dalmatia, as in Trieste, the method of vinification of late-harvested grapes gave rise to a wine called Prosecco and that the name has survived over time to still today designate, in the Croatian form Prošek, a blend produced with dried grapes from vines that are not called Prosecco or Prošek.

NOTES

1 Fulvio Colombo, Why Prosecco? The noble origins of a Trieste wine, Trieste 2012, pp. 113-116 and p. 128; Id., Prosecco. Heritage of the Northeast, pp. 123-128.

2 Reference to the two above-mentioned works is mandatory.

3 Prošek. Autohtono desertno vino Primorske Hrvatske (edited by Vinko Milat), Zagreb 2007 and contributions that have appeared online starting from the Wikipedia entry http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prošek, not always supported by viewing the documentation cited in the text.

4 Alberto Fortis, Journey to Dalmatia, Venice 1774, II vol., p. 99.

5 Pietro Nutrizio Grisogono, News to serve the natural history of Dalmatia, Treviso 1780, p. 135.

6 Isacco Serravalle, Geographical compendium of trade, vol. I, Venice 1817, p. 177.

7 Francesco Maria Appendini, Historical-critical news on the antiquities, history and literature of the Raguseans, Ragusa 1802-1803, I vol., p. 199.

8 V. Why Prosecco? and Prosecco. Heritage of the Northeast.

9 John Gardner Wilkinson, Dalmatia and Montenegro: with a journey to Mostar in Herzegovina, London 1848, I vol., p. 100.

10 Prosecco why, pp. 77-81 and Prosecco heritage of the Northeast, pp. 83-90.

11 Charle Yriarte, Les Bords de l'Adriatique et le Monténégro : Venise, l'Istrie, le Quarnero, la Dalmatie, le Monténégro et la rive italienne, Paris 1878, p. 266.

12 Charle Yriarte, The shores of the Adriatic and Montenegro, Milan 1883, p. 245.

13 Franz Petter, Dalmatien in seine verschiedenen beziehungen, Gotha 1857, vol. 1, pp. 69-70.

14 Wilhelm Hamm, Das Weinbuch. Wesen, Cultur und Wirkung des Weines; Statistik und Charakteristik sämmtlicher Weine der Welt; Behandlung der Weine im Keller, Leipzig 1865, p. 153.

15 L'Amico dei campi, Monthly periodical of agriculture and horticulture of the Agrarian Society in Trieste, XXIV (1888), 9-10, pp. 125-126 and 138.

16 Prosecco heritage of the Northeast, pp. 139-141.

17 Giuseppe Modrich, Roman – Venetian – Modern Dalmatia. Travel Notes and Memories, Turin-Rome 1892, p. 175.

18 Reinhard E. Petermann, Illustrirter Fürer durch Dalmatien, Wien 1899, p. 372.

19 Reinhard E. Petermann, Guide en Dalmatie, Vienne – Paris 1900, p. 191.