Follador Wins 2 Gold Medals at the Sparkling Wine World Championships

Follador dal 1769, a sparkling wine producer based in Col San Martino in Italy’s Conegliano Valdobbiadene area, said Tuesday that it won two gold medals at the Champagne & Sparkling Wine World Championships 2026 and was also selected for Doctor Wine’s Essential Guide to Italian Wines 2027.

According to the company, the two gold medals at the international competition went to Ruiol Castei Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG 2025 and Torri di Credazzo Cru Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG 2025. A third wine, Nani dei Berti Rive di Col San Martino Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG 2025, received a bronze medal.

The awards were announced as part of the 2026 edition of the Champagne & Sparkling Wine World Championships, known as CSWWC, a competition focused on sparkling wines and founded by British wine writer Tom Stevenson. The company said the judging panel included Stevenson, Master of Wine Essi Avellan and wine critic George Markus. The CSWWC awards ceremony is scheduled for Oct. 29 at Merchant Taylors’ Hall in London.

In the same announcement, Follador said it had been included in the 2027 edition of Doctor Wine’s Essential Guide to Italian Wines, edited by Italian wine critic Daniele Cernilli. The guide is one of several widely followed annual publications that rate and select Italian producers and bottles for trade professionals, collectors and consumers.

The back-to-back recognitions give the winery visibility in two different but influential settings: an international sparkling wine competition and a domestic guide with a strong profile in the Italian market. For producers in the Prosecco category, those results can help support positioning with importers, distributors and restaurant buyers, especially in export markets where competition among Italian sparkling wines remains intense.

Follador is based in Col San Martino, a village in the hills of the Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG zone in northeastern Italy. The area is part of the broader landscape recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The company says its winemaking history dates to 1769 and that it is now managed by siblings Michele, Cristina, Emanuela and Francesca Follador.

In a statement released with the announcement, Cristina Follador said the latest awards were an important confirmation of the company’s work and of the identity of its wines in Italy and abroad. She said the results would encourage the family to continue investing in research and in promoting Conegliano Valdobbiadene.

The medals were awarded to wines from the 2025 vintage, a detail that matters in the sparkling wine trade because it places the recognition on bottles currently entering or moving through commercial channels. In categories such as Prosecco Superiore DOCG, producers often use competition results and guide selections in marketing and sales materials, particularly when approaching foreign buyers or premium retail accounts.

The company also linked the new awards to what it described as a broader production approach built around the Metodo Gianfranco Follador, a proprietary winemaking protocol. Follador says that method is designed to preserve finesse and consistency in its sparkling wines. While the company presented that approach as one of the reasons its wines stand out, the announcement did not provide technical details on how the method differs from standard production practices used by other wineries in the region.

Doctor Wine’s Essential Guide to Italian Wines is now in its thirteenth edition, according to the company. Inclusion in the guide does not function in the same way as a competition medal, but it can still carry weight in the Italian wine business because it reflects an editorial selection rather than a single blind tasting event. For producers, appearing in such a guide can strengthen credibility with retailers, hospitality buyers and consumers who follow Italian wine criticism.

The combination of international competition results and domestic guide recognition is especially relevant for a producer such as Follador, which says exports are a strategic part of its business. The company said its wines are sold in a range of foreign markets, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, the Netherlands, China and several countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Asia.

The announcement arrives at a time when producers from the Conegliano Valdobbiadene area continue to push for differentiation within the broader Prosecco universe. Wines labeled Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG sit in a more tightly defined appellation than standard Prosecco DOC, and wineries in the hills often stress site specificity, cru bottlings and single-area designations such as “Rive” to underline that distinction. Two of the wines cited by Follador in the CSWWC results, Torri di Credazzo Cru and Nani dei Berti Rive di Col San Martino, were presented with place-linked identities that fit that strategy.

The company’s statement described 2026 as an already positive year for the family-owned business, though it did not disclose sales figures, production volumes or export growth data. It also did not say whether the latest awards had already affected orders from distributors or import partners.

What is clear is that the medals and guide selection add external validation at a commercially important point in the sales calendar, as producers prepare for autumn trade activity and year-end demand. For Follador, the immediate next public milestone tied to the announcement will be the CSWWC ceremony in London on Oct. 29, where the winery’s two gold-medal wines are expected to be formally recognized.