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Why is everyone against Prosecco?

In the last few weeks and days plenty have written about Prosecco, precisely against Prosecco, everyone wishing the end of the Prosecco bubble suggesting better, according to them, alternative sparkling wines. However, none of these articles addressed the real problem with Prosecco, there is nothing wrong with the Prosecco, as long as it is a good Prosecco. 

Prosecco is just a sparkling wine like there are many, that was at the right place at the right time, and with a production big enough to rival Champagne. Prosecco is a nice sparkling wine, nothing to be excited or rave about, when properly made is a nice drink, perfect as an aperitif or for a sunny day in the garden, but it ends there. Trying to compare Prosecco with Champagne or Franciacorta or Trento DOC, the latest on the list, is wrong, you can’t compare a Ferrari with a Fiat, can you? 

Prosecco is nothing more than a Spumante made using the Charmat or Marinotti, as it also known in Italy, method, and like Prosecco there are plenty of other Spumanti being made in Italy and beyond, from north to south, made with different grapes, Prosecco is made with Glera, that are actually more versatile and better suited for food than Prosecco. Despite that, despite Prosecco being just a Spumante, everyone loves Prosecco but hates Spumante, the word Spumante is associated with the sweet Asti Spumante that flooded the market a couple of decades ago.

Champagne from France, Franciacorta and Trento DOC from Italy and even Cava from Spain are a completely different sparkling wine and cannot and should not be compared to Prosecco, and these are only the main denominations and appellations, there are plenty of wineries making sparkling wines using the classic method or with the second fermentation in the bottle, from Lambrusco to wine maker’s private cellar. Classic method sparkling wines are a different breed of wine all together, not least because of their cost, which should be higher due to the labour involved in making them.

What is the problem for Prosecco and why is everyone wishing it to go? There is too much Prosecco that tastes like a cheap sparkling wine, this is real problem. I remember, at the beginning of the Prosecco boom, when Prosecco was rising to fame, plenty of newspaper articles were saying “Better a good Prosecco than a cheap Champagne”, several year later, the title should be “Any good sparkling wine is better than a cheap Prosecco. “ 

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Vinitaly, the Show

I recently came back from the Vinitaly in Verona, the three day event dedicated to Italian wine. I haven't seen the official numbers yet and even if the organization says that visitors are up, I did see and was told by some of my friends exhibiting, that this year, there were less people, professionals and non.  In a fair that provides a snapshot of the Italian wine industry and trends this year a lot of effort was made in the preparation of the stands, especially the biggest producers, not only with brand new stands, but many of them shouting environmentally friendly and family and tradition messages, wine has suddenly become more than just the liquid in the bottle, is the people behind, the cultivation methods, this was the year in which the producers became storytellers. Walking along the fair there was a striking contrast between shiny new stands and old ones, big, gigantic stalls and a single person desk in the consortium stand, invitation only stands and stands open to everyone, this is and has always been Vinitaly.  But 2017 was also Vinitaly 51st anniversary, last year they put together an amazing show to celebrate their 50th anniversary, with plenty of events, including an amazing dinner in an amazing venue, the Arena, that I was privileged to attend, but despite what the organizers say, I see the fair in need of a revamp and new directions.  Together with one of our producers, I was invited to attend an award ceremony, our producer was one of the winners, and like all awards ceremony there were several speeches including one from the president of Vinitaly, the celebration has also been used to present a book about Vinitaly from the very first edition to what the future holds, and one of the main messages from the president was that they wanted to celebrate their 50+1 anniversary, not the 51st, and the reason behind was to emphasise the start of a new era for Vinitaly, to me though, it sounded like a vain old lady, refusing to accept her age. Celebrating the 51st anniversary is looking forward to the future, adding candles to the cake, but without forgetting or ignoring the past.  Vinitaly is a party, a show, and as such is fun to be part of, but it is losing its real reasons, the reasons producers of any size attend it. Every year, more and more producers, especially small and medium ones, do not attend the fair, from a cost/benefit analysis, they consider it to be too expensive. This year, one of our producers noticed that there was more space between stands without realising that the halls were the same as last year. More and more alternative fairs are taking place around the Vinitaly, costing less and targeting specific markets, natural wines, real wines only to mention a couple, taking exhibitors and visitors away from the main show, exhibitors wants to sell wine and visitors buy it, and Vinitaly does not do it anymore.  I love Vinitaly and cant wait to attend next year event, but unless it goes back to its origins and the real reasons why it has been created, why exhibitors and visitors are attending it, I can’t see vinitaly lasting another 50 years.

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Has Prosecco become a joke?

I recently read that a Cava producer has started selling its own “premium”, which I see as a tentative to stay away from the price war that is taking place in the category, Prosecco and I keep asking myself if I am the only one thinking that the Prosecco sage has become a joke. The whole word is crazy about Prosecco, the amount of cheap Prosecco being bottled and sold keeps going up, with wine drinkers wanting to pay less and less for it and plenty of bars and restaurants offering ice cold tasteless sparkling wine labelled as Prosecco, still the love for the wine is there.

Prosecco is still enjoying its honeymoon with wine drinkers all over the world and when in love we only see the good side, we can’t see any imperfection and are ready to accept everything until the day we wake up and realise how stupid we were and how much time we wasted for a love not worth our time. Yes, this is what I think will happen to Prosecco lovers the day, not too far away, the prices and quality would reach their lowest.

Everyone is jumping on the band wagon, each new Prosecco call itself “premium”, to justify a higher price and avoid becoming involved in the price war, despite all coming from the same wineries, because Prosecco, thanks to the EU, has to be produced in Italy, specifically 3 regions, with only a few wineries with the capacity to produce millions of bottles.

A couple of decades ago it was the Asti Spumante until the quality reached its lowest and the sugar its highest, and Spumante became and still is synonymous with cheap, sweet, Italian sparkling wine, if we were to offer Prosecco or Spumante, 9 people out of 10 will choose with no hesitation Prosecco without knowing that Prosecco is a spumante and the latter is simply a type of wine, Prosecco is a Spumante made with Glera grapes with a denomination, all other spumantes, with the exception of Franciacorta and Trento, have no denomination therefore, each wineries give them the name they like and are better than a cheap Prosecco.

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Wine Experts and Wine Apps

I have just finished reading Robert Joseph’s article and it made me writing this post. We live in an era where we share and rate plenty online, from our dentist to the couriers we got the Italyabroad.com wine from, not just the wines, we live in a time where we all want to share, we all love feeling part of the virtual community, not least because is very easy and everyone with a device and access to internet can feel part of something, and because of this human need, more and more apps or websites will make their appearance, in all sectors and industries.

Has the appearance of these apps or websites made their industry experts disappearing? Yes some of them have gone and moved to a different industry, but some are still there, what this trend has really done was to make the real experts smarter, made them finding opportunities, it actually created new markets for them. Has Tripadvisor made all other restaurant guides disappear? No, it made them different, it made them changing their approach, their way of communicating, new online guides are appearing.

Yes, and owning a restaurant I can certainly confirm that, being number one on Tripadvisor brings more customers than possibly any other guide, however, are these the diners I want? I want diners that know what they are coming for, be aware of the establishment I am, and not just because I am number 1 of Tripadvisor, if they only come because I am number 1 they are possibly not going to like what they see, and as soon as I slip to number 10, I lose them and all the others. Not only, very rarely I agree with Tripadvisor ratings. If I was a winery, I would not want to sell a single wine or only a great vintage because Vivino users love it, I want to sell my wines every year and every vintage, and with such an amount of wines and reviews being posted, it is easy to get sucked down.

The wine industry is very fragmented, due to the fact that there are an endless number of wines being produced, therefore the guides are limited, sometime to single countries, only in Italy the main ones are 6, so if someone is looking for a French wine in Italy, none of those guide will be useful. And this is the same for France, Spain and any other country, these guides have now become the expert’s guide, because they tell the experts what is happening in the country in terms of producers and wines, and Vivino and all other apps or website are capitalising on this fragmentation and the wanting to be social, the wanting to be part of the bigger community, that wine users like any other, have.

The other advantage that could be easily become the self destruction bottom, is the number of wines being reviewed daily that is much bigger than what a person or a small group could do. Users check Tripadvisor when going on holiday or out for dinner and normally limit the choice to 3 or 4 options before making the choice and read a few of the reviews to get a feeling if the other reviewers have a similar profile to them, and when using Tripadvisor users are spending a decent amount of money and few hours or days of their life, is it worth doing it for a £10 bottle of wine? Maybe for a £100 yes, so whether this model will be sustainable in the long term is still a question mark.

Tripadvisor business model is very different from Vivino, we go to the hotel, the wine has to come to us and not all wines are available everywhere, there are logistic issues, taxes, availability, at the moment their stream of revenue are advertising and offering space to retailers to advertise their wines. Is that going to be enough to cover their cost?

However, I do not believe that these apps or websites will be the death of the experts, the experts will still be there, I do believe some of them will go and would have gone anyway, later than sooner, nonetheless, the smarter ones will remain, changing the way they communicate, their approach to wine and consumers, reinventing themselves. When the insurance sites comparison started to appear, many declared the death of the insurance broker and companies were queuing to be included in the website, several years later, brokers are still selling insurances and filling the comparison websites and insurance companies are getting out of them.

The problem with only 25 experts being able to making a living out of their profession is that the internet has created plenty more experts, wine is much more accessible and available than it used to be, it has created niches, and if I was a winery before approaching a direct line to potential buyers I will firstly look at whether these buyers can get hold of my wines and then who else is using the same system but until them, I will work in getting my wines in as many markets as possible with the right partners without worrying too much about Vivino.