The Prosecco phenomenomenom

It used to be Babycham, these days it’s Prosecco. 

Yes, it’s National Prosecco Day, although you may want to pour a glass with your left hand whilst eating a fillet mignon at the bowling alley after holding a garage sale; because it’s all of those days too.

Prosecco; just how did it suddenly become the ‘must have’ drink with the ladies? It seems to be everywhere and packs of drunken women clutching empty Prosecco bottles roam the streets of most towns on a Saturday night. Yes, it’s refreshing in an uncomplex and simple way; one of those drinks whose enjoyability is more about in its simplicity than flavour; all bubbles and zing and a bit of a laugh. But then the tears start, the mascara begins to run, the high heels come off and the Prosecco blues begin.

‘I reallly love you mate’, ‘it’s all his fault’, ‘he doesn’t understand me’, ‘what’s my name?’ used to be the territory of drunken males on a Saturday night. But now it’s the litany of women from eighteen to eighty, out on the razz and out of their minds on prosecco. Why do they do it?

Prosecco; it’s not even that good. Basically, it’s an average Italian sparkling white wine, generally dry, made from Glera grapes and before 2009 a wine producer could make wine outside of the Prosecco region, using the Prosecco grape, and put Prosecco on the label. It’s certainly not as good as Champagne or even a reasonable Cava. But in 2009 it was upgraded to DOCG (Definitely Open to Crying Girls) because the producers from that region wanted to eliminate other winemakers from using the name. So now, if a producer makes sparkling wine from the Glera grape, but it doesn’t fit the DOCG specification, they can’t label it Prosecco.

Of course the main reason for its popularity is that the bubbles tickle the noses of the ladies at a quarter of the price of champagne. It also mixes well to make anything from a Bellini to a very complex cocktail and the simple flavour works with pretty much all food as well – chips, pizza, curry, breakfast cereal, low fat yoghurt - so it has a universal appeal in a way that most wines can’t compete with because they actually taste of something. Yes, it’s really just grape fizzy pop with added alcohol for people in bras who don’t really like wine but can manage fruit flavoured ciders.

Strangely its rise to almost universal approval is not as a result of huge, costly advertising and marketing campaigns. The girls have spread it through word of mouth and by posting millions of pictures of them smashed out of their minds through swigging it on social media sites. Interesting side effects of the Prosecco phenomena are that evidence suggests that Prosecco is the cause for the rise in births over the last six years, has led to an eighty percent drop in lager and lime sales, and is responsible for bottle banks always being full.

The only other drink that comes close to it with the ladies is gin. 

But that is another sad and sodden story.