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Is it time to give prosecco a second chance?

Cathie Gowdie

Posh or not? Prosecco is a great party drink.
Posh or not? Prosecco is a great party drink.Supplied

I had some really brilliant prosecco in Italy recently. I wouldn't have been able to tell it from champagne proper. I know there are dry proseccos, but I tend to think of them as fruity and tending to sweetness rather than as lovely as this was. Should I give prosecco a second chance?

Prosecco has come a long way in reputational terms since its nadir in 2006, when a big Austrian producer paid Paris Hilton to drink something called Rich Prosecco from a can.

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Indeed, market researchers in the United Kingdom have found that a great many Brits think merely ''knowing what prosecco is'' marks you out as ''posh''. (Other signs of poshness identified by the survey included ''having a cleaner'' and the wince-worthy ''telling people what school you went to when you are in your 30s''.)

Prosecco sales in the UK have soared since the survey results were published in 2010. Tempting though it is to suggest this is due to a prosecco-based push for social mobility, the statistics make it pretty clear that it comes down to price.

Prosecco is typically cheaper than ridgy-didge champagne and as you correctly point out, can range from being super-sweet to dry, delicious and quite, well, posh.

How does it differ from champagne? Champagne is made from chardonnay, pinot noir or pinot meunier grapes. Prosecco is traditionally made from the white-wine grape glera.

Champagne comes from you-know-where, while sparkling wine sold under the name prosecco is grown as far afield as Brazil; however, Italian authorities have been working for several years to limit the term ''prosecco'' to wines grown in a small number of designated regions in north-east Italy. Champagne undergoes a secondary ferment in the bottle – that's how the bubbles develop – whereas most prosecco gets its fizz from fermenting in big tanks.

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Prosecco is generally a fresher, crisper drink than champagne and should be drunk within months of bottling.

Both are great party drinks and the price tag on prosecco makes it an affordable mixer in an Aperol Spritz, a peachy Bellini or a Negroni sbagliato, in which prosecco takes the place of gin. But it would be a pity to dilute the best prosecco, which deserves respect. Among premium Italian imports (these are labelled DOCG) you will find that ''brut'' is dry and ''dry'' is actually quite sweet; try comparing them with domestic examples from Victoria's north-east.

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