Asti Spumante.?

Question

When dining in an Italian restaurant, what is the wording used to order Asti Spumante wine ? I ask this, as when my wife was in Rome and ordered it she received a completely different drink to that which we normally drink here in UK. We are going to a family meal in an italian restaurant and would like to drink this wine with our meal.

Answer 1

Sorry but Asti Spumante is not a wine is a spumante is like a cheap champagne we use to drink it with cake on birthdays or special occasion.

Answer 2

Prosecco

This light sparkler, from the northern Italian region on Veneto, is made for summer. It's light, refreshing, and carries slight hints of melons, pears, and almonds. Prosecco is made from a grape of the same name and is excellent paired with calamari, a green salad, or a plate of pasta

Moscato D' Asti

Moscato d'Asti, too, is made from Moscato grapes. Technically a fizzante, a fizzy or lightly sparkling wine, Moscato d'Asti has fewer bubbles than its Asti cousin. This wine is light and crisp and relatively low in alcohol, about five to seven percent. Drink Moscato d'Asti with the traditional Italian wafer, biscotti, or in the summer with a crisp garden salad

Lesser known than the white wine sparklers of Piedmont is  Bracchetto, a ruby-red sparkling wine made from Brachetto grapes. This wine is festive and light, with subtle hints of strawberry and cherry. It is excellent when paired with fruit and cheese or a light dessert,

Have a good evening out :)

Answer 3

What are you used to drinking in the UK? A sweet or dry wine?

Asti Spumante is a sparkling wine which can be either sweet (dolce) or dry (brut) and is generally served in Italy as a dessert wine. However, if your wife ordered it at the beginning of a meal then she most likely was served the dry version as Italians don't pair sweet wines with entrees but only with dessert -- actually, most Italians prefer a dry spumante even with dessert and stick to sweet dessert wines only as an after-dinner type drink.

This difference between sweet and dry could have been where the difference came in. You can try ordering it by saying dolce (dol-chay) or brut depending on what you prefer. But be careful, you may find a restauranteur who will refuse to serve you a sweet wine with your meal if he feels it doesn't pair well with what you are eating!

Answer 4

Un bicchiere di Asti Spumante per favore ( a glass of...)

Un bottiglia di Asti Spumante per favore (a bottle of...)

You know of course this is a dessert wine and normally a dessert wine would be chosen at the time of choosing your dessert so as to make a good match. I just wonder if perhaps  your wife accidentally  stated an order for the Asti when the waiter was taking the order for the starters (if any) and main course and wines to accompany them. When doing this he would not be expecting to note down a dessert wine. I therefore wonder if the bottle he brought was a similar sounding but dry wine which he assumed was the wine being referred to for your main meal. But then this doesn't explain why he didn't bring it out later. One of those infernal mysteries I fear.

Answer 5

"when my wife was in Rome and ordered it she received a completely different drink to that which we normally drink here in UK"

I don't really understand what's happened: I mean, if you order an Asti Spumante in the UK, what they bring to you...?

This is very important since Asti Spumante is a DOCG, Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denominazio... . If somebody bring you something different saying it's an Asti Spumante and it isn't, you can even sue him! So, the question is: where your wife was served the real Asti Spumante, in the UK or in Italy...?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ita...

Anyway: "Potrei (potremmo, if you're more than one) avere un Asti Spumante, per favore!" is the more common form for odering it.