Wines of The Times

A Sip, a Smile, a Cheery Fizz

HEY, you! Yeah, you, Mr. Mucketymuck, in your black power suit and shades. You never let 'em see you sweat, right? You and your air-conditioning turned all the way up — at home, in the car, in the office, in the beach house — you like to see the others shiver. You're the man, starched and creased. While around you people wilt and melt into puddles, you're triumphant, with your big, expensive cabernet in the dark, chilly steakhouse.

Wines of The Times: Prosecco
What the Stars Mean:
(None) Pass It By
* Passable
** Very Good
*** Excellent
**** Extraordinary
Ratings reflect the panel's reaction to wines, which were tasted with names and vintages concealed. The panelists this week are Eric Asimov; Florence Fabricant; Piero Trotta, the wine director at San Domenico; and Marco Albanese, the wine director at Lupa. The tasted wines represent a selection generally available in good retail shops and restaurants. Prices are those paid in liquor shops in the New York region.

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You're not the kind of guy who'd ever be caught dead with a prosecco, are you? What is that, you ask, some kind of girly wine? Hey, did someone turn off the air-conditioning? Now what will you do? It's getting hot. It's getting sweaty. You can't take it, can you? You've got to go? Exit, stage left!

Whew. Sorry about that, but I had to get rid of that guy. So annoying! And he does not understand summer, or summer drinking. Of course he wants a prosecco! Prosecco was made for summer, when you need something blithe, airy and carefree. It's a light summer dress, a summer thriller for the beach, an entertainment, not a burden. It's a social drink. You cannot brood over a prosecco.

Not that I have anything against air-conditioning on a scorching day, but drinking prosecco is more like the gentle cooling of a rippling breeze, always leaving you wanting more. It's almost meant to be consumed outdoors in the heat or the shade, partly because it's low in alcohol, generally under 12 percent. It's refreshment, and it's stylish, too. Millions of Italians can't be wrong about that.

Nobody drinks sparkling wine as regularly as the Italians do. It's made in almost every Italian wine region, and no meal seems complete unless it starts with a frothing glass of spumante, the melodious Italian word for sparkling wine. Among all the Italian sparkling wines, prosecco is rising rapidly in popularity, trailing in the United States only that old standby, Asti spumante, which takes its name from its region of origin. And why not? You could not ask for a better value in outdoor sparklers, in the garden, at the beach, up on the roof or under the boardwalk.

The Dining section's tasting panel was thinking summery thoughts recently when we sampled 25 proseccos. We felt lighthearted, able to transcend the relatively gloomy confines of our Midtown office with the cheery hiss of bubbles in the air. Florence Fabricant and I were joined at the tasting by Piero Trotta, wine director at San Domenico, and Marco Albanese, wine director at Lupa.

Let's be clear about what we were tasting. All of the wines were made predominantly of prosecco, the grape, sometimes mixed with a small percentage of pinot bianco, pinot grigio or chardonnay. Some, but not all, of these proseccos were actually, to be polysyllabically precise, Prosecco di Conegliano-Valdobbiadene. That is the — here we go again — denominazione di origine controllata, or D.O.C., a designation earned if wines meet certain standards, for example which grapes are used, where they are grown and how the wines are aged.

To earn the D.O.C. designation the grapes must come from the hilly area between the communes of Valdobbiadene and Conegliano in the Veneto, the region of Venice and Verona in northeastern Italy, and the wine must be made of at least 85 percent prosecco.

And yet it's a tricky issue for consumers. Even if the grapes are not from the designated area, or if the winemakers do not adhere to regulations concerning the proportion of grapes used, the wine may still be called prosecco, but not Prosecco di Conegliano-Valdobbiadene. In this case, the wine must be at least 75 percent prosecco.

For example, Zardetto, one of the leading prosecco producers, made two wines that cracked our top 10 list. The Zeta was a prosecco D.O.C., one of only two vintage-dated bottles in our tasting, made from grapes grown in a single vineyard. It was our most expensive bottle, at $22. But Zardetto also makes a non-D.O.C. prosecco, which we liked practically as much. It sells for $10 a bottle, and was our best value