Asti Spumante

Asti Spumante is a sweet, fully sparkling white from Piedmont in northern Italy, made from Moscato Bianco grapes. Expect peach, apricot and fresh grape flavours with orange blossom, honeysuckle and plenty of bubbles. Light, fruity and usually low in alcohol, it’s brilliant with fruit tarts, cheesecake, pavlova, fresh berries and spicy Asian food.

Taste:

Sweet, sparkling and basically impossible to mistake for anything serious and stern.

Asti Spumante is typically sweet, light-bodied and intensely aromatic, with flavours of ripe peach, apricot, fresh grapes and citrus. Expect plenty of floral aromas too, particularly orange blossom and honeysuckle.

Unlike gently fizzy Moscato d’Asti, Asti is fully sparkling, bringing more energetic bubbles to all that sweet, fragrant fruit.

It’s also relatively low in alcohol compared with many wines, while fresh acidity keeps the sweetness lively and refreshing.

Peachy, floral, fizzy. Asti knows exactly what kind of party it came to.

Food Pairings:

Asti Spumante is brilliant with fruit-based and creamy desserts.

Try it with strawberry cheesecake, raspberry cheesecake, fruit tart, peach tart, apricot tart, pavlova, panna cotta or strawberries and cream.

Fresh fruit works beautifully too, particularly strawberries, raspberries, peaches, apricots and tropical fruit.

Its sweetness also makes Asti a great partner for spicy Asian food. Try it with Thai green curry, Thai red curry, spicy noodles or dishes featuring chilli, ginger and aromatic spices. The sweetness helps balance the heat while the bubbles keep everything fresh.

For cheese, soft creamy styles such as Brie and mascarpone-based dishes can work particularly well.

Similar Wines:

If you enjoy Asti Spumante, Moscato d’Asti is essential exploring. It uses the same grape in the same part of Italy but is more gently sparkling and typically even lower in alcohol.

Moscato lets you explore the wider family of sweet, aromatic wines, while Brachetto d'Acqui takes things in a brilliantly different direction with sweet sparkling red wine.

For something drier while keeping the Italian bubbles, Prosecco is the obvious next move.

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More About Asti Spumante:

Asti comes from Piedmont in northwestern Italy and is made from the highly aromatic Moscato Bianco grape.

The wine is produced using a method designed to capture both the grape's natural fragrance and its sweetness. Fermentation takes place in pressurised tanks and is stopped before all the grape sugar has been converted into alcohol, leaving sweetness behind while creating the bubbles.

You'll often now see the wine labelled simply Asti, although Asti Spumante remains a widely recognised name.

And one useful distinction: Asti and Moscato d’Asti aren't interchangeable. Asti is fully sparkling; Moscato d’Asti is gently fizzy.

Same grape. Same neighbourhood.

Different bubble settings.