Asti DOCG: The Sparkling Gold of Piedmont

Piedmont is not just truffles

Piedmont, a north-western region of Italy. It is not only Barbaresco, the Battle of the Oranges, the Palio horse races, and gianduiotto chocolates made with Tonda truffle hazelnuts. It is also a famous sparkling wine from a wine zone at the foot of the Alps — whose vineyards, by the way, are on the UNESCO list.

The provinces of Asti, Alessandria and Cuneo received their appellation in 1932, DOC status in 1967, and the highest tier, DOCG, in 1993. Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita is the highest classification of Italian still and sparkling wines. It is marked on the bottle as DOCG and guarantees geographic origin plus a strict production method. That is, the wine was made in a particular area and by a set technological specification — no “what if it works out”.

Muscat — an ancient guest

The label says Asti DOCG, and it goes without saying that the wine is Spumante — sparkling. It is made from Moscato Bianco, white Muscat. This is the oldest grape variety of the region, sugar-sweet, with moderate acidity. The berries are eaten raw and turned into “old grape salad”.

Interestingly, this ancient variety came either from Syria, or Egypt, or possibly even Arabia, along with the Greeks at the dawn of time. It has not been established exactly — but certainly long ago. The history of Muscat in Piedmont spans more than two thousand years — even the Romans valued this grape.

The province of Asti makes many wines: Moscato, Barbera, Dolcetto. Then the label reads … d’Asti. These are mostly still wines. But right now we are talking about the sparkling one.

Carlo Gancia: rogue and genius

Carlo Gancia — winemaker, chemist and simply a handsome man. Born on 4 July 1829 in Narzole, Piedmont. From childhood he was interested in winemaking methods. He studied chemistry in Turin, where he even devised and refined a vermouth formula. Then he worked for two years in Reims, a city in Champagne. He learned the method of sparkling wine making — and came with his brother to Canelli, a commune in the province of Asti.

At first they rented a cellar and tried, on the fly, to simplify the Champagne method so that costs were lower and profits higher. And it worked. Carlo Gancia learned to stop fermentation at a high level of sweetness through repeated filtration, interrupting fermentation and chilling. That is how Moscato Spumante came about — a sweet, low-alcohol wine with a pressure of about 1.5 atmospheres in the bottle.

Asti appeared a year or two later. It differs in that it goes through only one fermentation and has a pressure of about 3 atmospheres. The man was 37 years old when he began releasing wine under his own brand, aiming at the foreign market. Try saying he was not a rogue.

The Charmat-Martinotti method

The sparkling wine production method was perfected by three people:

Federico Martinotti — a chemist and enologist, designed the autoclave. Eugène Charmat — brought the design to an industrially usable form. And Alfredo Marone — refined the pressure filtration system.

This is the Charmat-Martinotti method (also known as the Charmat method), which is still in use. Most Italian sparkling wines are made this way — including the famous Prosecco. It differs from classic bottle-fermented sparkling wine in that the second fermentation takes place not in the bottle but in a large sealed vessel — an autoclave. It is cheaper, faster, and the taste turns out fresher and fruitier. This is exactly why Asti smells so much of peach and orange blossom.

How to drink Asti

The distinctive feature of Muscat is the pronounced taste of the grape itself. There are pleasant honey-floral notes, but all at the edge of perception. Muscat is a special grape. In the case of Asti it is also smart advertising with brand popularization.

Sparkling wine is traditionally drunk well chilled. A glass of wine can be complemented with a medium-aged cheese or fruit — something not too expressive, so as not to overpower the taste. Definitely not sweets: they make the wine taste sour. And nobody wants a sour Asti.