The Rive of Prosecco Superiore: all 43 named sites

What the Rive term means and which rules come with it

Article 1 of the production rules lists the types of the denomination and states that the sparkling wine carrying the term “superiore” may also carry the term “Rive”, provided it is followed by a geographical reference from Annex A. Article 7 adds that the name of the municipality, hamlet or locality is allowed on the label only if it is accompanied by the word “Rive” and only if that reference appears in the vineyard register.

The rules that separate a Riva from sparkling superiore without any additional term sit in articles 4, 5 and 6:

• a maximum yield of 13.0 tonnes of grapes a hectare in specialised cultivation, against 13.50 for sparkling superiore without additional terms;
• a minimum natural alcohol content in the grapes of 9.50% vol;
• a minimum total alcohol content in the wine on sale of 11.50% vol, against 11.00% vol for sparkling superiore without additional terms;
• harvesting by hand only, as for Superiore di Cartizze and for sparkling wine labelled “sui lieviti”;
• grapes from a single one of the geographical units in Annex A;
• release for sale from 1 March of the year after the harvest.

A wine carrying the words “sui lieviti” may not also carry “Millesimato” and “Rive”, while the harvest year stays compulsory in both cases.

The 43 Rive, municipality by municipality

Annex A of the production rules is headed “list of the 43 additional geographical units accompanying the term Rive, grouped by municipality” and numbers the units from 1 to 43, from Valdobbiadene to Colle Umberto. All 15 municipalities of the denomination have at least one Riva.

Valdobbiadene and San Pietro di Feletto hold the most units, six and five. In three municipalities (Refrontolo, San Vendemiano and Colle Umberto) the single Riva carries the name of the municipality itself. At Vittorio Veneto, by contrast, no unit carries the name of the municipality: only the four hamlets of Formeniga, Cozzuolo, Carpesica and Manzana appear on labels.

One name in the list overlaps with the subzone. San Pietro di Barbozza, the fourth unit, is the hamlet in whose territory article 3 places Cartizze, so the same hamlet of Valdobbiadene can appear on a label in two different ways, as a Riva or as Superiore di Cartizze.

Why the term exists: slope, hogback and ciglioni

The production rules tie the term to the variety of the land: “the great variation in soil and climate across the denomination finds expression through the municipal term Rive, which brings out the particular aptitude of the different localities in the production zone”. The word “rive”, in traditional use, means the flanks of the steep hills: the gradient allows only partial use of farm machinery, so most vineyard work is done by hand. The compulsory hand harvest, the same text explains, keeps the grape skins intact, and the skins hold the aromas that later pass into the sparkling wine.

The shape of these hills has a precise name. The producers' consortium describes the UNESCO site “Le Colline del Prosecco di Conegliano e Valdobbiadene”, inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2019, as a series of sharp ridges running east to west, separated by small parallel valleys, a landform known as a hogback.

On those slopes growers built the ciglione, a terrace that uses grassed earth instead of stone. According to the mapping studies the consortium cites, ciglioni covered 20% of the area in 2015 against 28% in 1960, and 67.33% of them sit on slopes between 15 and 60 degrees. The rows follow the girapoggio pattern, running around the hill, which the production rules say preserves soil fertility and limits erosion.

Rive, Cartizze and sparkling superiore: what changes

The three wordings allowed on a label carry three different sets of rules on yield, alcohol and harvesting. Sparkling superiore without additional terms goes up to 13.50 tonnes of grapes a hectare, a Riva to 13.0 and Superiore di Cartizze to 12.00. The minimum total alcohol content of the wine on sale is 11.00% vol for sparkling superiore and 11.50% vol for both Rive and Cartizze.

Prices at the winery line up the same way. In 2023 Superiore di Cartizze returned 13.83 euro a bottle, a Riva 7.70 euro and sparkling wine from the denomination sold in Italy 6.35 euro. The grape market repeats the same spread: 4.25 euro a kilogram for grapes destined for Cartizze, 1.75 for grapes destined for Rive and 1.65 for grapes destined for Conegliano Valdobbiadene, all down on 2022.

Prosecco DOC, which covers nine provinces of Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia, has neither subzones nor additional geographical units, so the word Rive never appears on its bottles.

How much Rive is made

In 2023 the denomination claimed 8,653 hectares of productive vineyard: 8,177 as Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco DOCG, 370 as Rive and 106 as Superiore di Cartizze. The chapter devoted to the Rive carries the more precise figure, 369.4 hectares, down 6.5% on 2022 but up 238% on 2010.

Growers farming grapes destined to become Rive fell from 264 in 2022 to 254 in 2023, a rise of 243% on 2011. The sparkling wine houses bottling the type rose to 82, one more than in 2022 and eight more than in 2021.

The volume sold reached almost 3.7 million bottles, 6.1% more than in 2022, for a value of 28.4 million euro, 1.4% less. Compared with 2010, the first year of sales, volume has more than tripled (+248%) and value has gone from 6 million in 2012 to 28.4 million in 2023. Italy took 71.9% of the volume, against 76.1% in 2022, and exports passed one million bottles. The leading export destinations by volume were the Adriatic and Danubian countries and the central European and Baltic countries, at 15.9% each, then Russia at 11.7% and Switzerland at 11.6%.

How to spot a Riva on a label

On the label the geographical reference never stands alone: it has to be preceded by the word “Rive”, as in “Rive di Guia” or “Rive di Ogliano”. The production rules also set the type size: the reference “Rive” followed by the name of the municipality, hamlet or locality, together with the words “superiore”, “millesimato” and “sui lieviti”, must appear in characters no larger than two thirds of the name of the denomination.

The common DOCG rules apply on top of that. The name “Prosecco” always follows “Conegliano Valdobbiadene”, “Conegliano” or “Valdobbiadene”, in characters of equal or smaller size. Any description not provided for in the production rules is banned, including adjectives such as “fine”, “scelto” and “selezionato”. The state seal, which the consortium describes as the gold band common to every Italian DOCG, carries a unique traceable number alongside the name and logo of the denomination.

Millesimato follows a rule of its own: the word is allowed if at least 85% of the wine comes from the stated vintage. For the Rive the vintage has to be stated in any case, because the obligation comes from the term and not from the producer's choice. To taste them where they are made, the open cellars are covered in the walk through the hills, or you can book a guided tasting; to buy a bottle from the denomination there is the comparison of labels on sale.