Wine · Light & sessionable
Moscato d'Asti
Gently fizzy, honeyed, five percent — dessert's favorite lightweight.
How to order it: Piedmont's frothy peach. Serve very cold with fruit or cake, or as the cake.
Flavor profile
The proper serve
- Chill to 40–45°F
- Small white glass
- Only ~5% ABV — pour freely
- Pairs: fruit, cake, brunch
- Drink the youngest vintage you can find
The story
Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains is among the oldest cultivated grape varieties in the world, and in Piedmont's Asti hills it became something charmingly modest: a gently sparkling wine of around five percent alcohol, traditionally the bottle winemakers kept for their own lunch so the afternoon's work might still get done. Asti earned DOCG status, Italy's highest classification, in 1993. Then came the strangest marketing campaign no one planned — in the 2000s, American hip-hop adopted Moscato by name, and a sleepy Piedmontese farmer's wine became a club-adjacent phenomenon. The fashion cooled; the wine remains exactly what it was. Peaches, orange blossom, a polite fizz, and no hangover worth mentioning.
Adjacent pours