The steepest vineyards above Valdobbiadene sit at gradients where no tractor can climb, and the grapes are still carried down by hand — a practice local growers call viticoltura eroica, heroic viticulture. Those slopes were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2019, recognised not for a single monument but for a landscape shaped by centuries of terracing. The hills run roughly fifty kilometres between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, north of Treviso. Their form is geological: a series of parallel ridges known as hogbacks, folded by tectonic pressure and cut by narrow valleys. Vines were recorded here in Roman accounts, but the modern industry dates to 1876, when Italy's first school of oenology opened in Conegliano. Antonio Carpenè, working in the same decade, refined the tank fermentation method that gives the wine its fine, persistent bead. The consortium governing the denomination formed in 1962; DOCG status followed in 2009. A visitor on a prosecco tasting tour from venice travels less than seventy kilometres and arrives in an entirely different Veneto — one of hill roads, campanili and cellar doors rather than canals. The wine itself is made from Glera, a green-skinned grape that ripens late and keeps its acidity. Within the denomination sit the rive, forty-three single-hillside subzones whose names appear on labels, and Cartizze, a 107-hectare cru above San Pietro di Barbozza often described as the most expensive farmland in Italy. Charmat-method fermentation in pressurised autoclaves preserves the floral register — white peach, acacia, green apple — that longer bottle ageing would strip away. Dry, extra dry and brut designations here run counter to intuition: dry is the sweetest of the three. Architecture follows the vines. Sixteenth-century Venetian villas stand among the rows, built by patrician families who moved inland when the Republic turned to agriculture. The Molinetto della Croda, a water mill wedged against a rock face at Refrontolo, has ground grain since the seventeenth century. The abbey of Follina, Cistercian and Romanesque, holds a cloister of paired columns no two of which are carved alike. Asolo, on a spur to the south, kept Caterina Cornaro's court after Venice took her Cypriot crown in 1489. These sit within easy reach of most valdobbiadene wine tour from venice itineraries, which follow the Strada del Prosecco — the signposted wine road opened in 1966, the first of its kind in Italy. What distinguishes the region today is scale. Roughly three thousand growers work plots often smaller than two hectares, selling to cooperatives or bottling under their own labels. There is no gate, no ticket office, no central admission point; access is arranged winery by winery, which is why organised prosecco tasting tour from venice departures remain the practical route for travellers without a car. The official consortium site is coneglianovaldobbiadene.it. Summer 2026 finds the canopies full and harvest still six weeks off.