Like me, I am sure that you spend a lot of time reading mummy blogs; the punchline to tales of misadventure is often something like: “Send prosecco!” Prosecco has become the panacea for exhausted mothers. And not just mothers: prosecco is now the wine of choice for all kinds of social occasions. This year for the first time the British spent more on prosecco than champagne.
In many ways prosecco is a better drink for social occasions than champagne: it’s a lot cheaper, it’s lower in alcohol, lower in acidity and sweet. Not so sweet that you really notice, but sweet enough to make it pleasant. Most people think they like dry wines but actually tend to prefer wines with a little sugar in them. Prosecco contains between roughly 12g and 32g per litre of residual sugar. A bone-dry wine such as Sancerre will have less than 2g; most champagnes have around 8g.
Prosecco originated in north-east Italy around Venice, and its name comes from the grape variety. Jealous to guard the brand of their increasingly lucrative wine, producers changed the name of grape to glera in 2009. So now growers who planted prosecco vines in Australia or California have to label their wines glera, which sounds like part of the male genitalia.
Prosecco has a long history but its modern incarnation owes everything to 1960s mass-production techniques. The wine is filtered, then bubbles are added using the Charmat method, in which the wine undergoes a secondary fermentation in a tank, and it is then bottled (a bit like proper lager). The result is a sort of middle-class Lambrini: a sweet, cheap and rather bland wine that’s fun to drink.
There is another kind of prosecco, however. It’s called col fondo, and producers claim it is how the wine used to be made. Like champagne, the bubbles are produced by fermentation in the bottle. The wines are serious, bone-dry and even improve a little with age. You can recognise them on the shelf because they’re bottled under screwcap rather than cork. Ca dei’ Zago, available at The Ivy (evidence that it can’t be too shabby at all) make an excellent example, as do Casa Belfi. It’s cloudy but it isn’t in any way funky. Don’t serve too cold and you’ll be rewarded with delicate honey and floral aromas and a finish that has something of the nuttiness of a good sake. At £13.49 (from Les Caves de Pyrène), it’s not expensive but it is too good to use just to blot out the misery of parenthood. Save it for when the children have gone to bed.
This is the final Empire of Drinks. The Last Post you might say. It’s been a fun column to write. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it.
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Henry Jeffreys’ first book, Empire of Booze, will be published by Unbound in 2016. @henrygjeffreys
