Italian sparkling wine, generally known as spumante or prosecco, is becoming increasingly popular abroad where it is now recognized as the alternative to French champagne.
According to the Coldiretti farmers' union, some 80 million bottles of spumante will be popped at the end of the year in Italy and 50 million bottles abroad, a 22% jump in value over last year.
Almost half of the 300 million bottles of spumante produced in Italy every year are drunk between the middle of December and the middle of January.
In Italy, the union observed, only 2% of the bubbly consumed during the end of the year holidays is French champagne and this because of the major quality/price advantage of prosecco.
This advantage is also boosting sales abroad, with increases of 16% in Germany, 8% in the United States and 72% in Britain, which is now prosecco's third largest market.
In Russia, spumante sales are up this year by 124%, in Spain by 33% and in France prosecco imports rose 2%.
Spumante is now outselling champagne in the United States and Switzerland and last year exports of prosecco broke the threshold of 100 million bottles.
According to a recent article in the prestigious British weekly The Economist, spumante sales abroad have doubled over the past 15 years and risen fivefold over the past five years in Britain, for a total of 1.1 million bottles in 2006.
Prosecco is also winning over wine experts who accept it as the alternative to champagne, the Economist wrote.
However, the success of prosecco abroad ''will now be at risk because of the European Union reform of the wine sector which Italy voted for,'' observed Coldiretti chief Sergio Marini.
Italy, Marini explained, ''failed to exploit its market position against producers in northern Europe. Italy lost a battle in Brussels and this was a defeat for the national wine sector''.
Most Italian spumante is made using the Charmat Method or 'closed tank' method, compared to the traditional Champenoise Method.
The Charmat Method, invented in the early 1900's by Eugene Charmat, involves putting bubbles in wine by adding sugar to a sealed tank, letting a second fermentation take place and then transferring it to a bottle under pressure.
In the Champenoise Method, invented by the French monk Dom Perignon in 1640, the wine is fermented in the same bottle in which it will eventually be served.
