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Prosecco is an Italian sparkling wine, made from the Prosecco grape. It is normally dry, but not as dry as champagne and is certainly lighter and easier to drink than champagne. It’s very popular in Italy and also Germany, where it can be bought at “discounters” such as Lidl and Aldi, where it’s just a few Euros. As a result, it’s common for Germans to have a couple of bottles in the fridge, ready chilled, for a midweek, non-celebratory, refreshing drink.
I guess it fits the space that Cava does here, only it’s even cheaper in Germany. We all felt that it was a pleasant enough wine and that we probably would be happy to knock back a couple of glasses midweek, if it were as cheap as chips. However, the problem is that over here it’s fashionable and not at all cheap. Our wines were between £5.99 and £8.99 which is too much, we felt, for something so light and easy.
The one exception was Marks & Spencer’s Prosecco Conegliano e Valdobbiadene, which is £7.49. Conegliano e Valdobbiadene is the restricted area where all the best Prosecco comes from and this one was certainly much better than the others. The smell was full, interesting and pretty fruity, compared with the others. The taste was fuller than the others with a pleasant taste of apples. The bubbles seemed softer.
La Marca Prosecco di Conegliano-Valdobbiadene, which is a whopping £8.99 from Majestic, was nicely fragrant. It reminded us of the smell of ripe pear skins, and certainly pear was a flavour that we kept finding on these. The smell reminded Lorraine of the powder that you find on the skins of jelly babies. The taste of Prosecco is usually drier than the smell leads you to expect. This one was dry, simple and lightly bubbly. Fine, perfectly likeable, but £8.99 is just too much.
Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Prosecco di Conegliano is a more reasonable £5.99 and does come in a beautifully shaped bottle. Very sexy indeed. However, it smells of almost nothing. The taste is good, with a little more sugar than some others. We found the bubbles quite foamy.
Ca’rosa Prosecco from Oddbins is £7.49 or £5.99 if you buy 6 mixed bottles. It was mildly fragrant with a pretty tasty, but just not exciting at all. Waitrose sell the La Marca that isn’t from the restricted area, and costs a reasonable £5.99. However, it is an inferior wine. I thought it smelt of pink shrimp sweets and the taste finished bitterly, at the back of the throat, reminding us of saccharine or soluble aspirin.
Sitting in my cold dining room on an autumn evening tasting Prosecco probably isn’t fair to the wine. Most Italian whites are neutral and light bodied. Chances are that if I were in some fabulous little piazza, with the warmth of the day radiating back from the stones, and the aromas of delicious Italian food exciting my appetite, then this light, easy, refreshing wine might have the desired effect. In England, it doesn’t really work.