Wine enthusiasts insist that pairing the wrong wine with a souffle is a far worse offense than having the souffle itself fall. While I’m not sure Julia Child would agree, one thing is for certain: Many people have misconceptions about dessert wine. For starters (no pun intended), a dessert wine is not necessarily sweet. In fact, it should contain some acidity so that it contrasts with the sweet richness of the dessert itself. When the quality of fluffiness is added to the sweet richness, bubbles are in order. The three sparking wines below smoothly accompany the sweet omelet.
De Faveri Prosecco Rose Extra Dry, $16.
Here is a spumante so Italian that practically the only information you can find about it on the web in English reads like something from a really bad dubbing of an Italian skin flick: “The picked grapes are being crushed by a pneumatic press. The must is being left rest for a night. . . . The turbid part, after filtration, is being put together the limpid part.” Et cetera. The facts are that this sparkler is made from 98 percent Prosecco grapes from way up high in the hills and 2 percent Raboso, a red grape from the Treviso region that lends the wine its color and finish. It is fruity but much drier than you expect it to be from its looks. And it’s so bubbly that it’s likely to make you giddy, which was definitely the case with two of our tasters, one of whom said that he will never again “diss spumante.”
Batasiolo Moscato d’Asti Bosc d’La Rei 2005, $14.
The Moscato is what is known as a semi-sparkler dessert wine, and it may well have the lowest alcohol content (5.5 percent) of any wine on the market. This perhaps makes it the ideal beverage to serve for breakfast, if that’s the time of day you want to have your sweet omelette. Note the word Bosc on the label, and think of pears. The wine, a pale yellow color (don’t be fooled by the amber of the glass bottle) has the world’s tiniest bubbles. In fact, they’re downright cute. Unaccompanied by food, the Moscato seems to resemble a Riesling. When our anti-spumante railer first sipped it, he said, “This is a wine for your aged relative who would really rather be drinking pear brandy.” How quickly he changed his tune. When matched up with the marmalade and eggs, the wine bucked up in the way you always wanted Edith Bunker to do with Archie. But here’s a little trick to make it go down even more smoothly with an early summer breakfast: Mix it with fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice for a twist on the mimosa. Festive!
Bortolotti Spumanti Prosecco Valdobbiadene Extra Dry, $16.
This pale bubbly has just the slightest hint of green in it, lending it an extra-refreshing quality. Its true Champagne-style effervescence remains alive and kicking. It has a citrusy scent and is tingly in the mouth, whether or not you are having it with food. This is what gives it the best all-around value of the three wines under consideration. It’s the one you may want to order a case of. None of our tasters wanted to do anything but keep drinking it, even long after the food had disappeared. Fine Living magazine calls this Prosecco “the Italian wine that will make you forget all about Champagne.” An exaggeration, but only a slight one.
