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Appellation · Italy

Asti and Moscato d’Asti

Two sweet sparkling wines from Moscato Bianco under one DOCG — one fully sparkling and industrial in scale, the other gently fizzy and far better.

Asti DOCGcontinentalmoderate
What to expect in the glass

Sweet, grapey and floral with orange blossom, peach and elderflower. Moscato d’Asti is gently fizzy and around 5% alcohol; Asti is fully sparkling and around 7%. Both are best very young and very cold.

About Asti and Moscato d’Asti

Both wines are made from Moscato Bianco — the oldest cultivated variety in the Muscat family and one of the oldest in Europe — by the tank method, with fermentation arrested by chilling before all the sugar is consumed.

That is the key technical point: the sweetness and the bubbles come from the same single fermentation. The wine is never fully fermented, which is why the alcohol is so low.

Asti Spumante is fully sparkling, around 7% alcohol, and made in enormous quantity. Moscato d’Asti is only lightly fizzy, around 5%, made in smaller batches from better fruit, and is a substantially finer wine.

Moscato d’Asti is one of the few genuinely successful pairings for fruit-based desserts, and its low alcohol makes it one of the more moderate things on a wine list.

What the name means

Legal name
Asti DOCG
Type
Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita (DOCG)
Set by
Consorzio dell’Asti DOCG, under MASAF
Recognised
1993
Regulates
Origin, plus grape varieties, maximum yields, minimum ageing.

Everything a DOC controls, plus a compulsory analytical and tasting examination before bottling and a numbered state seal on the neck. The tier above DOC in regulatory strictness, which is not the same as guaranteed quality.

Worth knowing

Covers both Asti Spumante, fully sparkling at around 7% alcohol, and Moscato d’Asti, lightly sparkling at around 5% and made in smaller batches.

Grapes

Wines from here

sparkling

Moscato d’Asti

Lightly sparkling, grapey and sweet at around 5.5% alcohol — one of the few genuinely low-alcohol wines that tastes complete.

sparkling

Asti

The fully sparkling Muscat of Piedmont — sweet, grapey and frothy, and much improved since its Asti Spumante days.

What to eat, and how to serve it

Derived from this region’s signature styles. Each is listed separately, because a region does not have one serving temperature.

Asti

Serve at 6–8°C (well chilled).

Try with fillet steak, asparagus or trout.

Moscato d’Asti

Serve at 6–8°C (well chilled).

Try with fruit desserts, gorgonzola or thai salads.

Where to go next

Places worth trying if you like this one — neighbours, rivals, and the obvious step across.

  • Barbera d’Asti — Piedmont’s everyday red grape in its heartland — high acidity, low tannin, and the wine the locals actually drink.
  • Gavi — Piedmont’s best-known dry white, from Cortese, in the hills towards the Ligurian coast.

Sources

Sources consulted