The Italian restaurant in the Big Apple promotes the uniqueness of the Rive di Ogliano Cru, the Veneto winery’s flagship product, embracing “The Value of Time”, the project devised by the Dal Bianco family to value the longevity of old Prosecco vintages.
New York, 13 June 2024 – Masottina, the historic Veneto winery located in the Conegliano Valdobbiadene hills and run since 1946 by the Dal Bianco family, expands the circle of its R.D.O. Ambassadors beyond the national borders and plants its first flag in America, designating an Italian restaurant located in the USA. The restaurant is Felice 83, the popular address in the Upper East Side of New York City, which serves typical Italian cuisine, prepared to perfection using top-quality seasonal raw ingredients.
Felice 83 is the first overseas R.D.O. Ambassador to join the group of restaurant owners who, together with Masottina, believe in the “value of time” and who include in their wine lists old vintages of R.D.O. to experiment with culinary delights which these wines pair with so well. Through this project, Masottina has for several years now been revealing in the glass the secrets hidden behind the longevity of its Rive di Ogliano R.D.O., Cru and the flagship product of the Conegliano based winery, produced in two variations on the theme with Levante, the first Rive in the Wine Spectator Top 100, and Ponente. These two wines, the pride of the Veneto winery’s production, are the result of single vineyards on the Rive di Ogliano, in the Prosecco Superiore Conegliano Valdobbiadene DOCG region which, because of its particular terroir, yields long-lasting wines especially suited to food pairings.
“Since 2009, the first year of production, we have conserved every millesimo of the R.D.Os.: they are old vintages on which this project is based, the result of my family’s vision to go beyond the traditional and generalised idea of Prosecco and that is demonstrating the power of our wines thanks to the unique Ogliano terroir.” explains Federico Dal Bianco, vice-president of Masottina, who adds: “Following on from L’Alchimia in Milan, Camponeschi in Rome, La Moscheta in Padua and the Trattoria Città di Venezia in Conegliano, we are proud to plant the first flag of our R.D.O. Ambassadors in the USA, in such an important and unique city as New York. Felice 83 is a restaurant that for years now has been an ambassador for Italian food and wine in the Big Apple and we could not have chosen a venue more in keeping with our company values.”
“Agreeing to become R.D.O. Ambassador was a snap decision because Masottina is a company that for more than seventy-five years now has been working and exporting under the banner of the perfect Felice 83 combination: extreme attention to quality and Italian pride”, states Christian Ferrulli, Wine Director of the Felice Restaurants Group. “Those who live and work in New York know that taking time out from the frenzy of everyday life to seek some relaxation and slow things down becomes a necessity and for this reason too we are delighted” that our customers can enjoy the ‘value of time’ with a unique experience accompanied by amazing wines and typical Italian food.”
Masottina
The story of Masottina can be traced back to the 5 hectares of vineyards acquired in 1946 by Epifanio Dal Bianco. When the manor house overlooking the vineyard was restored, an ancient inscription came to light: Casa Masottina. Hence the name of the historic brand owned by the Dal Bianco family for three generations. Today Masottina wines are the product of almost three hundred hectares which extend across the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the Conegliano Valdobbiadene Hills and the Veneto region. A vine planted area built up over time, consisting of carefully chosen vines cultivated by the family in keeping with the sustainable rules of SQNPI. It is however in the hills of Ogliano that Masottina’s production and quality philosophy is expressed at its best, through the ‘Cru’ wines grown in this unique terroir: R.D.O. Ponente and R.D.O. Levante, which thanks to Wine Spectator have placed the Rive di Ogliano for the first time in the magazine’s TOP 100 most important wines in the world.
