All that sparkles is not Champagne..

Selector Magazine Summer 2014-15

Words by Mark Hughes  We kicked off the tasting with an Italian benchmark, the Bocelli Prosecco from Veneto, made by the Bocelli family.......... It was a superb way to start, with many giving the wine a gold medal score and comments such as ‘beautiful balance of sweet and savoury characters with lovely fruit and an elegant spritz’. Ask a wine drinker what Prosecco is and most will tell you it is the Italian version of Champagne. While technically correct, it is a pretty broad generalisation. If you then asked, what the most popular sparkling wine in the world was, most would answer Champagne. They’d be wrong. It is, in fact, Prosecco. How did this humble Italian bubbly become so famous so quickly, why is it so popular and is the trend happening here in Australia? To answer all those questions we set up a Members’ tasting, inviting along a group of Wine Selectors Members who love their sparkling white wine. Paula and Lloyd Clark have been Wine Selectors Members for close to 15 years. For the past seven years, they have subscribed to the Sparkling Series as part of their Regular Delivery Program. Krystina Siech and her partner Patrick Fosdike share a similar story, getting a regular delivery of sparkling wine from Wine Selectors since August 2013. So these guys know their sparkles.  We invited the quartet to our headquarters in Newcastle to sit down with Wine Selectors Tasting Panellists Christian Gaffey, Trent Mannell and Adam Walls to sip their way through 15 Prosecco. That doesn’t sound like many wines, and it isn’t, due to the fact that in Australia there are only a handful of producers actually making Prosecco. Nearly all of those producers are based in Victoria’s King Valley region, and most of them are of Italian descent, so it makes sense they want to champion Prosecco.  What actually is Prosecco? Prosecco is a sparkling white wine, indigenous to the Veneto region in Italy’s north east. It is made from the Prosecco grape, which is now officially referred to as ‘glera’ because Italian producers successfully petitioned to have Prosecco (the drink) protected by a DOC (designated production zone), much the same way Champagne (the drink) can only be called Champagne if it comes from Champagne (the region). However, this law only covers Europe, so producers in Australia can still use the term Prosecco for their wines (for the time being). Apart from using different grapes, it differs from Champagne in a number of ways. Primarily, Prosecco is not made in the Méthode Champenoise, that is, it does not undergo a secondary fermentation in bottle; instead it undergoes fermentation in a tank and is bottled under pressure. This is commonly known as the Charmat method, after French vine grower Eugene Charmat. But, in fact, he adapted the process from its inventor, an Italian guy named Federico Martinotti. In Italy the process is referred to as Metodo Martinotti – no wonder the French and Italians get on so well! Ahem... This fermentation process gives Prosecco another couple of major differences – it is much more fruit driven, and because it is less labour intensive, it is generally much cheaper than Champagne. The price points of Prosecco in Australia are around $18 to $25, which is great value if you are looking for a celebratory bubbly that is easy to drink. Furthermore, the fact that it has a stronger fruit profile means it is very versatile when it comes to matching with food. Think seafoods, antipasto plates and tapas. Being more affordable is probably the major driving factor for its rise in popularity in Europe, along with good marketing campaigns by the Italians. And if you add to the fact that it is generally lower in alcohol, at around 12%, and has a lighter bubble, it is easy to see why Prosecco is becoming so popular.  The Aussie test Most people in the room, our Tasting Panel included, had a fairly limited history with Prosecco, tasting the odd glass here or there. We kicked off the tasting with an Italian benchmark, the Bocelli Prosecco from Veneto, made by the Bocelli family. If you recognise the name, it is because of Andreas Bocelli, the famous opera singer who was born into a winemaking family and with the label eyeing the Australian market, we were lucky enough to get a couple of bottles for this tasting. It was a superb way to start, with many giving the wine a gold medal score and comments such as ‘beautiful balance of sweet and savoury characters with lovely fruit and an elegant spritz’. It proved a hard mark to live up to and while some of the Aussie Prosecco got close, in particular the ‘wonderfully tight acid’ of the Chrismont La Zona, the ‘excellent palate weight’ of the Dal Zotto Pucino, the ‘delicate fine mousse’ of the Coriole and the ‘leesy complexity’ of the Lana Pizzini, overall it showed that Australian Prosecco is still finding its feet. That being said, all our guests said they were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the tasting and would give Prosecco another go over the summer. Paula, who likes Champagne for its dry profile, said she would be targeting the ‘brut’ style of Prosecco, Lloyd was sold on the Lana, while Patrick and Krystina vowed to include Prosecco in their summer sparkling repertoire.  With all that in mind, perhaps you too will try some ‘Italian bubbly’ this summer. If you do, let us know what you think.