Prosecco

Michael Dal Zotto, Otto’s son and now the family’s winemaker, tells the next part simply: “when we released our first Prosecco into the market, it was so popular we had to restrict it to three bottles per person.” It took nearly twenty years of steady work after that before the category genuinely took off: Michael calls it “twenty years for Prosecco to become an overnight success,” but the Dal Zotto family’s guiding motto, “if you share something, it will grow,” meant they actively encouraged other King Valley wineries to plant it too, rather than guarding it as a competitive advantage.

Brown Brothers and a wave of other King Valley producers followed through the 2000s, and what started as one family’s attempt to recreate a taste of home became the foundation of an entire Australian wine category.

Prosecco is, technically, both a grape name and a European place name, and for years that ambiguity sat at the centre of a genuine trade dispute between Australia and the EU, which considers “Prosecco” a protected term tied to specific regions of Italy. In 2026, the Australia-EU Free Trade Agreement finally resolved it, and the compromise is more specific and more interesting than a simple win or loss for either side.

Under the agreement, Australia will protect Prosecco as an EU geographical indication, but Prosecco will continue to be recognised as the name of a grape variety here too, meaning Australian producers can keep labelling their wine Prosecco domestically, indefinitely. For wine made for export, the term will be phased out over ten years from the agreement’s entry into force; after that, Australian Prosecco-style wine can still be exported, just not labelled Prosecco. It will be sold as Glera instead: the grape’s other name, and, fittingly, the name the wine already carries at home in Valdobbiadene.

Whatever it ends up called, the wine itself is unmistakable: pale, light, gently sparkling, made in most cases by the Charmat or tank method rather than the slower bottle-fermented process used for traditional-method sparkling: a faster, fruitier style built for drinking young rather than cellaring. Pear, green apple and white blossom carry through in a wine designed to be poured generously rather than contemplated.

The Adelaide Hills, Yarra Valley and Riverina have all followed the King Valley into the category since, but Whitfield remains where it started: with one family, a smuggled cutting, and a wine named after exactly what they were.