Prosecco can be engaging, ethereal glass of sparkling wine

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Enchanting, perfume-like aromas of white flowers, raw honey, cantaloupe with a fresh, herb-like note. Balanced flavors of white peach, tangerine, fresh apricot with a hint of honey and spicy white pepper.

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Prosecco scares me. And it’s not because from time to time I have to say (out loud) Conegliano and Valdobbiadene. My fear comes from the unknown. When that skinny, little glass full of golden, foaming liquid is placed in front of me, I’m never really sure what I’m getting.

To quote a colleague of mine, prosecco at its worst is 60 percent sparkling lemonade and 40 percent hangover.

That is a little too harsh. It’s never more than 25 percent hangover. But seriously, prosecco has its ranges. It can be the quite simple — perhaps forgettable — bubbly that goes great with an ounce or two of orange juice on a Sunday morning brunch menu. It can also be an engaging, ethereal glass of sparkling wine with aromas of honey, flowers, ripe peaches and crisp flavors of preserved lemons, pears and green apples.

Most of the world’s proseccos come from northeastern Italy, in the regions of Veneto and Friuli-Venezia-Giulia. Prosecco gets its name from the town of Prosecco, just north of Trieste on the Adriatic Sea. It is made mostly from the glera grape, which has been cultivated there for centuries.

By and large, prosecco is an uncomplicated, pleasant sparkling wine that makes for a great aperitif, and in a sense serves the same purpose as those mass-produced Champagnes from the eponymous region in northern France. The only difference is you’ll pay a quarter of the price for the prosecco.

About 45 miles northwest of Venice, nestled in the foothills of the Alps are the towns of Valdobbiadene (VAHL-doh-BEE-ah-deh-neh) and Conegliano (koh-nehl-YAH-noh). These two towns, which I unfailingly mispronounce all the time, form the touchstone by which all other proseccos are judged. Here you’ll find proseccos of a different color. (Actually, they’re the same golden color as ordinary proseccos. It’s just an expression of foundational differences.)

Here you’ll find winemakers, like Desiderio Bisol, who make the kind of sparkling wine you hope to find in your glass. Bisol’s wines maintain the perfume-like aromas that is part of prosecco’s DNA, but they are balanced, elegant and a bit more complex than the stuff in your Sunday morning mimosas.

Bisol, like most prosecco makers, use the Charmat method to get those bubbles in the bottle. Charmat is misunderstood by many wine enthusiasts. Yes, it is less expensive and requires less time than the methods used in Champagne, but Charmat has its special purpose. Because the secondary fermentation (the part of the process that puts bubbles into still wine) takes less than two weeks in a giant pressurized tank, it preserves all the fresh floral and fruity qualities of the grapes.

In recent years, prosecco makers in Valdobbiadene and Conegliano have gotten the OK to use the Champagne method (a process in which the secondary fermentation takes place inside the bottle) and still call their wines prosecco. However, these wines tend to lose their freshness and gain yeasty notes, kind of like Champagne.

It’s no wonder that this new style has gained favor with Champagne lovers. Somehow, that’s not true prosecco for me. You can make a great prosecco that’s not simply honeyed lemon water with bubbles. Bisol uses a painstaking four-stage fermentation process just to make the base wines and takes great care with the final blend before putting the wine in the Charmat vat.

Bisol also makes several sparkling wines with chardonnay, pinot bianco and pinot nero grapes and he uses the Champagne method for them. These really do taste like Champagne (in a good way), but his rightful claim to fame are his various proseccos featuring glera grapes. These, and other high-quality proseccos, may set you back $20 or $30, but they’re not to be feared.