Summer Wines: Asti

If you're ever in the mood to remind yourself, comparatively at least, that you're not an alcoholic, you can do worse than dusting off some Hemingway. In what is otherwise, frankly, a terribly sad novel, I recall with a smile coming across the opening salvos of Lt. Henry's tale in A Farewell to Arms. The first drink shared within the pages by the Tenente and his buddy in the officer's quarters behind the front lines in the Friulian Marches of WWI is a bottle of Asti. It is a nice moment of levity, encapsulated in what may well be the most easygoing wine in existence.

Asti is just great. It's deliciously aromatic, more-ishly sweet, low in alcohol (around 7%), and less bubbly than champagne or Cava. You can, quite legitimately, drink it all afternoon without succumbing to slurred discussions of politics or the many missteps of your favourite sports team. If I associate drier sparkling wines with celebratory toasts, Asti, I think, has a strong claim for the backyard, hanging out as the barbecue gets fired up. Buttoned opened in all the ways champagne is not, Asti can easily eschew fine glassware, and has a tradition of being glugged in pewter mugs that keeps the bubbles effervescent.

Asti comes from that eponymous region near Turin in the Piedmont (that also produces the red wine Barbera; of such incredibly varying quality that I rarely recommend it off the shelf, can be great though) from the Muscat white grape that crops up making both sweet and dry wines most places around the world.  The Martini & Rossi outfit, of vermouth fame (so famous that ordering a 'martini' in Italy gets you a glass of white vermouth rather than a gin based cocktail, much to my ongoing frustration) produces Asti in widely available industrial quantities. It's always produced non-vintage (that is, it doesn't bother to denote a year it comes from) so is ready to go off the shelf and a couple hours chilling anytime (it is best well and truly chilled, unlike say champagne that expresses itself better not ice cold).

The hill-top town of Asti, near Turin

The ubiquity of the Martini Asti brand is definitely a good jumping off point for checking out the wine. It's typically reasonably priced; about $14 in Canada or £6-8 in UK supermarkets. Though if you do have a wine shop that tends to know it's Italian stuff, I would say it's worth the trouble investigating a more artisinal offering at a slightly higher price point.

 Asti Spumante (as it used to formally be known; the sparkling adjective was apparently dropped for marketing reasons... or something) also has a sibling wine in Moscato d'Asti, which is of a different style, albeit delicious in its own right. It is extremely low in alcohol for a wine, around 5%, with only the slightest hint of bubbles to it, and is even sweeter. It's sometimes hard to find, but makes for a unique and interesting present as a desert wine.

My first stint in Italy was spent in winter in the central region of Abruzzo, and thus I didn't come across the quintessentially summer spumante of the north until my university days. My flat having a front porch rather than a backyard, I would wile away the spring term days between exams, reading or editing written work, with my trusty pewter tankard of fizzing Asti to quench the thirst. In summer days in Rome, it's pure drinkability when cold, led me to seek it out ahead of prosecco for picnics in the park. (Romanello, a moonshine equivalent made in the Alban hills, was taken for outings on the Via Appia)

The extraordinarily masculine setting of a requisitioned subaltern's room in the foothills of the Slovenian Alps, and the fact that Hemingway's avatar is drinking it at all, ought to dispel any notion that Asti, sweetness and all, is inherently a feminine wine. Much like a G&T, if the sun's out, there's no real valid argument against having a bottle of Asti on the go.

It's replication may be attempted elsewhere in the world, but the wonderful specifity of a bottle of Asti is one of the reasons it's denoted with DOCG status. That is, the most exacting standards of classifying a regional wine in Italy. Although DOCG status has been expanding in recent years to include, for instance, village level prosecco superiore, traditionally it has been reserved for Italy's most serious red wines.

The very fact, then, that light, fizzy Asti has been placed in the same category as Barolo or Amarone has rankled the occasional wine pundit; Hugh Johnson has called its DOCG status "questionable". What I cherish about it is its easygoing quality. In a world where so much wine takes itself seriously, and rightly so, Asti is the perfect wine to drink up without fuss and consultation. Bring it along to an afternoon backyard get-together, and tell anyone who sniffs at it to cop on and enjoy a summer's day.