How (and when) to drink Astis

MANILA, Philippines — So what Asti wine pairs with which dish, and which course? Astis run the range from 130 grams/liter of sugar for the sweeter wines, down to 90 g/l for Dolce and 17 g/l for Seccos (longer fermentation = less sugar). Serve them chilled (5-10°C).

For instance, for our first meal at Michelin star Il Cascinalenuovo, the welcome wine was an Asti Secco, a slightly dry Asti served with breadsticks (incidentally, the first breadsticks were invented in Piedmont by a baker whose son could not eat soft breads; the elongated dough could bake all the way through, easier to eat, and it caught on).

For the antipasti course, we were served a 2016 Barbera D’Asti, a red that pleased the palate next to paté macarons and a whole onion cooked and served with wonderfully pureed insides that felt like mashed potato, but revealed onion layers.

With dessert — a mélange of cookies, mascarpone dabs, white chocolate ice cream and caramelized wafer called Piedmont goloso, which translates to “greedy” — we had an Asti Dolce, which is somewhat sweeter. Each Asti has its own aromatic nose, inviting you to sip. Floral, slightly suggestive of fruits (some detect peaches, lychee, passion fruit and lemon zest), the weight is never heavy and the feel on the tongue is crisp, but not tight.

We followed it with Moscato d’Asti, the sweetest of this range, which went well with the chocolates served after dessert. You can obviously drink the sweeter Astis with dessert or cheese (they’re never syrupy or sickly sweet); but you can also pair them with antipasti (prosciutto or salamis) as well as fish, and many swear by them with chocolate or cheesecake. Again, a low alcohol content by volume means you can tipple even more of this wine without toppling over.