Alasia Brachetto d’Acqui

I am thrilled with this wine – a red, lightly sparkling (frizzante), classic and classical wine from Italy with plenty of depth and just 5.5% ABV.  It’s a quaffers delight.  The producer describes it as a dessert wine – sweet and fragrant – both of which are true, but I think it can be pleasurably drunk much more flexibly.  Being red, unlike its cousin the Moscato d’Asti, it’s sweetness is complemented by a real acidity which makes it a much easier tipple, especially if also served well chilled.  Personally, I could drink it all night.

Let me list its qualities.  Firstly it’s a naturally produced 5.5% ABV, a rare achievement which means that it has all its flavours intact.  And these are fine flavours of grapes (a quality not many wines can claim!) roses and red berries set off by mouth-watering acidity and a juicy finish.  This is achieved by the combination of the Brachetto grapes which are unique to the Piedmont and the region’s mastery of cold arrested fermentation (that also produces the 5.5% Moscato’s d’Asti).  The frizzante finish is also a delight – a gentle tickling of the tongue coming from its naturally produced 2 atmospheres of pressure, more exciting than any flat wine lying upon your palate, yet far removed from the 7 or 8 atmospheres bursting forth from any carbonated drink or full-bubbled prosecco or sparkling wine.  And if you do like the full bubbles effect, then look out for a Brachetto d’Acqui Spumante which will give you just that.

Some, of course, with very dry palates, will struggle with the underlying sweetness – residual sugar levels are, given the production method, inevitably high at around 75 g/bottle (around 10g/bottle is common in other wines).    But counter-intuitively for calorie counters it’s actually not a disastrous choice – the calories from the high residual sugar are off-set by the low alcohol content, so that it contains around 70 calories per 100ml, which is comparable to the 75 calories/100 ml of any typical 13% wine.

To cap it all, you can find these wines at a very decent price and buy them knowing they are the genuine DOCG article, not a marketing guru’s dream, but a traditional wine whose roots go back to Roman times.  Legend has it that Julius Caesar and Marc Antony presented Cleopatra several gourds of the wine and that she believed it had the power to unleash the passions of her lovers.  I’m inclined to agree with her.