Step into any Piedmont kitchen this time of year and you’re sure to spot two essential ingredients for holiday cheer: a bright red box of panettone and a bottle of Asti. As classic a pairing as Santa and his reindeer, no Christmas is complete without a slice of this sweet lofty bread, so merrily studded with raisins and candied fruits, and a glass of bubbly moscato.

It’s not just the folks of Piedmont who love this festive wine. The whole world does. “Asti DOCG is the most widely sold sweet wine in the world,” says winemaker Romano Dogliotti, referring to both Asti Spumante and Moscato d’Asti, flip sides of the same coin. 

If you taste the grape itself, you’ll understand why. It’s plump, sweet, and intensely aromatic. (Moscato Bianco is one of the few grapes that’s as good for eating as it is for winemaking.) In the glass, it offers a beguiling bouquet of orange blossom, honeysuckle, and white peach; enough acidity to balance the sweetness; and a light, frothy body that goes down easy. What’s not to love? 

Moscato grows around the world, and it’s made in a range of styles, from bone dry to sticky sweet. But know this: Its native home is Piedmont, south of the city of Asti, and there the predominant style is sparkling. 

“The trouble with Asti is this: Everyone likes it, but nearly everyone is ashamed to say it’s a good product, because it’s sweet,” says Giorgio Castagnotti, enologist at Martini & Rossi, one of Asti Spumante’s oldest and largest producers. He correctly pinpoints a paradox of wine consumption: People saythey prefer dry, but the numbers reveal a prevalent sweet tooth. Over 85 million bottles of Asti DOCG are sold annually, making it one of Italy’s biggest appellations. Of that, 54 million are Asti Spumante (now simply called “Asti”), and 31 million are Moscato d’Asti. Americans gobble up a good share: 14% of Asti and a whopping 69% of Moscato d’Asti.

How do the wines differ? Both are 100 percent moscato, but the amount of fizz, alcohol, and residual sugar varies. Look at the bottle for a clue: If it’s got a champagne cork, it’s Asti; if it’s a regular cork, it’s Moscato d’Asti. In other words, Asti is fully sparkling or spumante (think champagne), while Moscato d’Asti is frizzante (think fizzy water). That owes to the length of fermentation, which is only partial in both cases and always at low temperatures to preserve the grapes’ delicate perfumes. Asti ferments longer, so more of the grapes’ natural sugars are converted into alcohol (6% to 9.5%, like a strong beer) and carbon dioxide (which materializes as bubbles upon uncorking). Atmospheric pressure is great enough to require a heavy bottle with thick glass, bunt, and champagne cork with wire cage. Instead, with Moscato d’Asti, the fermentation is stopped earlier, leaving more of the grape’s sugars intact. That results in a sweeter wine with less alcohol (from 4.5%, like a session beer, to 6.5%), less atmospheric pressure, and gentler bubbles. 

Asti production tends to be industrial scaled and is dominated by a few big, historic firms which also make vermouth and liquors: Martini & Rossi, Cinzano, Gancia, Cocchi. Moscato d’Asti, in turn, is made by hundreds of boutique wineries in far smaller quantities. While there are many excellent examples of the latter, some names to look for are Saracco, Marenco, La Spinetta, and La Caudrina.

History & traditions

The first Asti Spumante was inspired by the world’s most famous sparkler, champagne. In 1848, Carlo Gancia from the town of Castiglione Tinella moved to Reims, heart of the champagne region in northern France. He stayed for two years, soaking up the method champenoise technique of producing bubbles. It’s a laborious process that involves a second fermentation inside the bottle, then a long riddling procedure to get rid of the dead yeast. Upon returning home, Gancia applied the same technique to the local moscato grape and named it Spumante Italiano. It took off like a rocket.

These days, Asti producers use a cheaper, less labor-intensive way to make bubbles. Rather than a fermentation inside the bottles, it happens in bulk in pressurized tanks, or autoclaves. Once the wine arrives at the desired level of sweetness, it’s filtered to eliminate yeast that would take the fermentation further. This is a variation of the Martinotti or Charmat method—the same used to make Prosecco (though, mind you, that’s a whole other creature, coming from a different region, a different grape, and having a completely different flavor profile). But the impact on price is the same: A bottle of Asti averages a mere $13 and Moscato d’Asti runs around $17.

Romano Dogliotti is one of the few boutique producers to make both. “I’m 70 years old, and I’ve been a contadino in the middle of the vineyards since age 14,” says the proprietor of La Caudrinawinery, who also happens to be chairman of the Asti Consortium, the DOCG’s governing body. His grandfather was a grape grower; his father founded the winery in 1945 but, like everyone else at that time, sold moscato in bulk to the big spumante/vermouth houses. It was Romano Dogliotti who began bottling under his own label—one of the region’s first to do so. Initially, the family’s moscato was done farmer style: fermented in bottle and unfiltered, making a hazy wine. But that was unacceptable for export. Dogliotti modernized, acquiring the autoclaves and filtration gear, then stepped onto the market with his Moscato La Caudrina in 1970, followed by the single-vineyard Moscato La Galeisa in the early 1990s. In 1992, he launched an artisanal Asti called La Selvatica.

In the Dogliotti household, these bubblies are closely tied to Christmas and New Year’s, coming to the table whenever the panettone does—or the hazelnut cake, or fruit tart, or zabaglione. “But also Easter,” he adds, when the colomba dove cake appears. “Also weddings and birthdays. Any festa is good for moscato or Asti!”

But it doesn’t stop there. “It’s a wine you can drink at any point during the day—with dolci, but also without,” Dogliotti notes.“Instead of drinking an oranaciata (orange soda), you pour a glass of Asti or moscato. I remember when I was young, the elders—my father and uncles—would have it for breakfast or for la merenda, the afternoon snack around 5 p.m. They’d get a big glass or a bowl and fill it with moscato, then dip their bread into it.”

Another common treat in Piedmont is to topchopped fruit with moscato. “We used to have peach trees in the vineyards, Dogliotti recalls. “Now they’ve almost all disappeared. But there used to be many, and we’d pick the peaches, cut them in little pieces, and pour moscato over them. Also strawberries. Once we got refrigerators, if one made that dish for the next day or the day after, it was even better! A fruit salad put under moscato and left in the fridge for two days, it’s special.” 

That translates easily to today’s cocktail culture, where Asti mixed with fruit juice offers endless possibilities.

But locals know that savory dishes pair well too. “Asti is very versatile,” Martini & Rossi’s Castagnotti insists. “Having Asti during lunch, combining sweet with spicy or salty foods—like a panino with salami, mortadella, or cheese—is something fantastic.” He considers Asti’s close association with holiday sweets much too restrictive.

To expand your thinking, consider this harvest-time breakfast from the Dogliotti family: Take a piece of toasted bread, drizzle it with olive oil, rub a garlic clove across the surface, then sprinkle with salt. Slice some salami on the side. “Then you eat the bread, salami, and either drink some moscato or eat ripe moscato grapes,” Dogliotti says. “That’s also special.” 

Future moves

While traditions are great, Asti winemakers are setting their eyes on the future. To lure new consumers, several innovations are taking place, spearheaded both by individual producers and by the consortium as a whole. 

Martini & Rossi recently debuted a Collezione Speciale tier, distinguished by its transparentjewel-cut bottle. “It was a challenge we posed to ourselves,” says Castagnotti of the premium Asti, first created in 2017 and introduced to the U.S. market this fall. “We wanted to do something outside the norm.We were looking for much more intensity, selecting specific grapes from specific hills, so the maturation level is totally different—much higher, sometimes even kind of sun-dried passito. That’s one of the reasons you get these very intense elements on the nose.” The fermentation is longer as well—five weeks versus the normal two. “We want to have a long contact with the yeast, in order to give more body,” he explains. “Very rich, but lively at the same time.”

The Asti Consortium has made an even more far-reaching move: In 2017, they permitted the production of dry Asti for the first time. Now bottles are labeled either Asti Dolce (sweet) or Asti Secco (dry). It’s a smart decision. Asti Secco allows producers to compete with the Prosecco behemoth (440 million bottles) on a more even playing field, targeting consumers who prefer something dry. At this early stage, few examples have reached the U.S., as the entire region produced only two million bottles in 2017, according to Dogliotti. He himself hasn’t started yet.“I’ll do it this year for the first time.” 

Asti Secco gives sparkling wine fans much to look forward to.But meanwhile, now’s the time to uncork that Asti Dolce, unwrap that panettone, and indulge. Buon anno! 

Published in the Winter 2018 issue of Tastes of Italia.