Asti, spumante, moscato - all the same but different, but not the same as prosecco
"If champagne is the queen of sparkling wines, Asti spumante is the fairy princess." The Telegraph
My husband is a bit of a wine snob, or to be more polite he has his favourite wines and tends to think that everyone else should share his taste. He has enormous disdain for the current craze for prosecco, but even more, it turns out for spumante.
Well he was talking about spumante and saying it was a real problem with the name which reminded him of spew, so I decided to look into it a bit more to try and persuade him that he should reconsider.
And indeed he should. It turns out that spumante is not the name of either the grape or the place it comes from, and indeed is really not used these days anyway. It's just the Italian word for bubbly or fizzy, but more bubbly than frizzante, which is only slightly fizzy. I think here in Australia we use the term spritzig instead for the less fizzy wines, which I think is German. Anyway what David is thinking of as spumante is today simply called Asti - the name of the town in Piedmont which is the centre of production for this particular kind of bubbly. It used to be called Asti spumante, but when the wine got its official DOCG - the equivalent of an Appellation Controlée back in 1994 it changed its name to Asti. You will often see spumante in smaller print on the bottle but this is merely descriptive and to distinguish it from Moscato d'Asti which is only lightly fizzy - or spritzig.
Moscato d'Asti is less fizzy, slightly sweeter and lower in alcohol - as low as 5% in fact, so has been called the perfect breakfast wine. I'm not sure anyone should be drinking wine for breakfast, but I suppose it's a romantic notion.
"Wines have perfumed aromas of mandarin orange, ripe pear, sweet meyer lemon, orange blossom, and honeysuckle. The wine's unique floral aroma is from an aromatic compound called linalool which is also found in mint, citrus flowers, and cinnamon." Wine Folly
Both of these wines are made from the same grape - moscato bianco - otherwise known as muscat, and, as one wine writer said, the only grape that produces wine that is truly grapey in flavour. Moscato bianco is one of the very oldest wine producing grapes. Wine has been made from it for thousands of years.
Muscat grapes, of course, are used to make other wines and fortified wines - Australian muscat is justifiably famous for example. And moscato is now being produced in Australia in increasing quantity, but is till being outsold by prosecco I believe.
But we will stick to these two wines of Asti and its surrounding area. I've talked about Prosecco elsewhere. The nearby towns of Alba, Alessandria and Cuneo - almost on the French border - are the other producing centres. But Asti is the main one. We once stayed in a B&B near this area and may well have visited one of those towns. It's a very beautiful part of Italy.
The other thing that differentiates Italian fizzy wines from the French ones is the different method of production. No secondary fermentation in bottles and fiddly turning of bottles. It's all done in steel tanks, though what they used before steel I don't know.
"Most of the wine is made in large stainless steel tanks produced in a modified version of the Charmat method, whereby the must is filtered and then stored in the tanks at near freezing temperatures to prevent fermentation from commencing. At a later time the must is then inoculated with yeast to allow fermentation to begin." Moscato bianco.com
The fermentation of the moscato is stopped before the longer fermentation of the Asti, which makes it sweeter I think. It also has an ordinary cork, whilst the Asti has the same sort of cork as champagne. The very best website to tell you all about it though is Moscatobianco.com. It's a beautifully designed website and has descriptions of several of the vineyards as well as the history and descriptions of the processes. I found it towards the end of my writing and it sort of made me wonder why I bother really.
Lots of people really, really like it and just because you or I may not go for it does not make it a lesser wine. Indeed The Telegraph in England was highly recommending one that Aldi was selling - don't know whether they sell it here.
"Aldi’s Asti has a texture of fairy floss, the scent of fresh grapes and orange blossom and the mouthwatering flavour of lemon sherbet and juicy peaches. The flavour is sweet but not at all cloying, thanks to a lovely freshness. This wine is more than just easy drinking, it’s effortless
It’s a welcome Sunday brunch tipple, the perfect picnic fizz, a great garden-party wine. And if you’re romantically inclined, there’s no better way to serenade a sunset on a warm summer’s evening than with a glass of this chiffon-light Asti." The Telegraph
I guess the mention of 'fairy floss' will not endear it to wine snobs, but I guess the makers won't mind. I believe that Asti is still one of Italy's highest selling wines. Nevertheless I fear my husband and his ilk will not be impressed. Too many people - mostly women and the young and therefore somehow not to be trusted with taste - like it.
"most of us regard fizz as a celebration or a treat not as a wine, so it’s much more about the name than the taste." Fiona Beckett
