Читать книгу Prosecco Made Me Do It: 60 Seriously Sparkling Cocktails - Amy Zavatto - Страница 6

INTRODUCTION

The year is 1868. Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women is first published. Australia ends its era as a penal colony for England. African American men gain the right to vote in the United States. The first cro-magnon human remains are unearthed by French geologist Louis Lartet. And Antonio Carpané produces the very first bottle of sparkling Prosecco, gleaned from the breezy hills of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene in northern Italy.

Carpané could only have dreamt that, by the beginning of the 21st century, his fizzy, frothy experiment would become the most toasted of toastables the world over. And why not? Affordable Prosecco makes bubbles accessible. For years, sparkling wine was relegated to the special occasion – the wedding toast, the birth, the big job promotion, the holidays, but… what about all those other days during the year when a glass of something sparkly performs the happy miracle of putting a smile on your face? Prosecco whets the appetite, enlivens the senses with its beautiful, fruity aromatics and makes a spectacular date at the dinner table.

From the traditional Bellini to the sophisticated Ship to Shore, Prosecco adds lift and life. When paired with anything from juices to fortified aperitifs, it can be an easy two-ingredient tipple that you can whip up in seconds. When combined in a multi-ingredient cocktail, it elevates flavours and aromatics with its freshness and zippy bubbles. Like mustard, butter and milk, it really should be in your refrigerator at all times.

Prosecco Made Me Do It is going to get you into that frame of mind (‘Oh, a snowstorm’s coming ? Better get Prosecco!’). These 60 cocktails – from the easy-peasy and riffs on classics to entirely new-to-this-world creations – will not only become entertaining staples for your home bar, but if I have my way, they’ll inspire you to come up with your own variations with this most charming of Italian sparkling wines, too. Let the Champagne drinkers hoard their bottles for a moment that never comes. Prosecco drinkers have more fun.

Up until the turn of the 20th century, the bubbles in Prosecco (and Champagne) were happening in the bottle via something called secondary fermentation. Fermentation is, simply, how alcohol happens: yeast (which exists naturally, or can be added) eats sugar (which, voila! is in grapes) and you get alcohol. You get bubbles when a second fermentation happens within a small space, like a bottle. This was happening with Prosecco, but not with totally reliable results. Some bottles were more sparkly than others. Some were still wines. And some bottles even exploded. Yikes.

In 1895, a brilliant man named Federico Martinotti figured out how to make a more reliable bubbly product with the region’s beloved Glera grapes. If that second fermentation could happen in large, pressurized wooden tanks, it could be better controlled. But it still wasn’t totally reliable. Another smart person named Eugene Charmat came along a few years later, tinkered with Martinotti’s technique, and invented a new tank in a more reliable material (stainless steel), that seemed pretty foolproof. And thus, the Charmat Method, by which nearly all Prosecco is produced, was born. Ta-da!