Monday,
August 20, 2007
Prosecco:
Italian Hot Weather Drink
The
ANNOTICO Report
Prosecco's is a mildly fizzy sparkling wine, a level cheaper
below Asti Spumante, a surrogate
Prosecco: What Italians Drink in Hot Weather
Daily
Bulletin.com
By
Joe Coulombe
Retired
Founder of Trader Joe's
August
12, 2007
Prosecco is a mildly fizzy sparkling wine.
It was rarely seen 20 years ago, but it's becoming more visible these days.
It's probably best right now during the dog days of August.
Prosecco is mostly made from the
white prosecco grape grown in a chilly part of
The following
spring, warmth would wake up the yeast and give a second fermentation, which
left the wine with a spritz.
Today, most prosecco is made not in bottles but in big vats, which are
called cuves closes in the charmat
process. Think of Andre Champagne. It comes in two levels of sparkling: frizzante which is mildly sparkling, and spumante which is closer to
Looking
at labels: The most authoritative, expensive appellation is the tongue-twisting
valdobbliadene prosecco superiore. It comes from the prosecco
-growing vineyards northeast of
Like
One of the prosecco's advantages is that it's relatively cheap. That's
why you may find it served at wedding receptions this summer as a surrogate
I showed my age
(77) above in referring to
I was surprised
that prosecco makers claim to have outsold Asti
because Asti has been far and away Italy's No. 1 wine, beating out soave (a
non-sparkling wine.). Production runs around 80 million bottles a year.
One nice thing is
that
And the flavor of
the moscato gets in the way of most foods except,
possibly, blanc mange.
(Remember the Monty Python skit about blanc
mange? Or is that another reflection of my age?)
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