A Staged Farewell

I may have just finished off a Wild & Wacky Wine Week, but I'm not opening tonight's bottle to carry on with that theme. Moscato is anything but wacky. It may well be wild - but that's only as in "wildly" popular.

I'd wanted to bring along a Prosecco for the evening because it was going to be a send-off for one of our neighbours. G-Dub was having everyone over for a last tipple in their place as the house was now all staged for sale and G-Dub was taking off to join up with Sam and the girls in California. The two of them could always be counted on for finding and bringing the newest and latest Prosecco to any of our gatherings in the hood. It seemed appropriate to bring one to their last hurrah...

...Except that it was a last minute event and I didn't have any Prosecco lying around that could make it to The List. Despite the growing popularity of the Italian bubbly, finding new Prosecco's to add to The List can be a tad difficult because the majority of the bottles found in our market are non-vintage and one of my little "rules" for the blog is that I can't add the same vintage of the same wine twice. I figured a Moscato d'Asti could fill in as a close alternative.

1918.  2012 Fontanafredda Le Fronde - Moscato d'Asti (Moscato d'Asti DOCG - Italy)

Don't be deceived by the accompanying photo. This isn't an "orange" wine. Rather, I brought along a bottle of Aperol to make Spritzers - thinking that the Moscato would be semi-dry and maybe even have a bit of bubble to it. As such, it would fill in nicely for a Prosecco. That wasn't the case. The wine was fully dry and didn't really remind me of a fruity Moscato at all but it still worked fine with the Aperol.

For those taking a closer look at the photo, yes, those are olives in the glass. Olives. Wine. If you're wondering if I'm crazy, I wondered the same thing the first time we were served a Spritzer from a bona fide bonne vivante from Venice. Some time back, at another neighbourhood gathering, La Vénitienne brought along the making for Spritzers and she introduced us to the buttery smooth, green olives that she used to garnish the drinks. I take her at her word and I now do the same. I don't really know if she was stringing me a line or not but I could care less because I do love my olives.

I know Boo and I are going to be sad to lose G-Dub and Sam as neighbours but, if we have to look for a silver lining, they did move to San Francisco and we have an open invite to come down and take in a bit of the wine culture down there.

I told them I'd bring the olives.