As you obsess about jazzing up what holiday feast you’ll put in the oven, don’t neglect what you sip from your glasses. You see, the right wine can be a key ingredient in your holiday meal, including how you kick things off.
Sure, few things are more festive than champagne, but bubbly can be too much wine for the Florida heat (and too hard on your wallet for big parties). Thankfully, there’s prosecco, a sparkling wine that’s sort of a younger, more carefree cousin with an Italian accent. Unlike champagne, whose sharp yeastiness can be a downer when it’s hot, prosecco’s softer, cleaner taste and finish make it perfect no matter which way the mercury’s headed.
And good prosecco runs under $20 a bottle. You’d be lucky to get a half-bottle of good champagne at that price.
Made from a grape by the same name in Conegliano-Valdobbiadene, a tiny area just north of Venice, Italy’s most popular sparkling wine comes in several pyrotechnic versions: Frizzante (fizzy) and spumante (very fizzy). Most of the good stuff is frizzante. There are non-fizzy ones, but you don’t see many in the states; plus, you’d be better off going for a wine made from other white varietals.
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2010.