Veneto Orientale IGT is one of several IGT titles used in the Veneto region of north-eastern Italy. It focuses specifically on the eastern (orientale) half of the region, specifically the Treviso and Venezia provinces.
Treviso is the home of Prosecco, which is often viewed as Italy's affordable answer to Champagne but which deserves to be recognized as its own style. Unsurprisingly, then a large number of Veneto Orientale wines are dry whites made from Glera (the Prosecco grape). Other key varieties here are Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay (for white wines) and Pinot Noir and Merlot.
In terms of geography, culture and wine styles, Veneto represents a transition between the alpine, Germano-Slavic end of Italy and the warmer, drier, more Roman lands to the south. Although slightly smaller than Italy’s other main wine-producing regions (Piedmont, Tuscany, Lombardy, Puglia and Sicily), it produces more wine each vintage than any of these. While Sicily and Puglia in the south were once the principal sources of Italian wine (when quantity was consistently favored over quality), this balance began to shift north towards Veneto in the second half of the 20th Century.
In the 1990s, southern Italian wine languished in an increasingly competitive and demanding world, but Veneto's administrators and producers kept a closer eye on the international wine market, upping its game with such wines as Valpolicella, Amarone, Soave and Prosecco. The Veneto Orientale IGT title was introduced in 1995, to bring a greater degree of winemaking freedom and to allow the region's producers to keep in step with the ever-evolving demands of the international wine consumer.
For more information on the Veneto region, and its DOCs, see Veneto.
