Day 4: 2013 Marchesi di Gresy Moscato d’Asti

Lunch. Taco joint. At the bar.

“What’s your best-selling wine?” I asked the bearded bartender.

“Depends who’s asking,” he said.

“What’s your most popular wine?” I tried again.

“For red, it’s a Malbec from Argentina,” he eventually said, referring to the 2013 Altos Las Hormigas Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina. The average retail price for a bottle of the Malbec is $10, and this restaurant sells it for $8 by the glass and $32 by the bottle.

“For white,” the bartender continued, “it’s the Moscato. For sure.”

He pointed to the “Dulces” header on the folded paper wine list in front of me. The 2013 Moscato d’Asti from Marchesi di Gresy, in Piemonte, Italy, costs $10.50 by the glass and $42 by the bottle at the restaurant, and around $15 per bottle at retail.

“Why is it so popular?” I asked.

“It’s sweet,” he said with certainty. “For anyone whose taste isn’t very refined, sweet is the first place they go.”

Hmm.

My friend Louis and I ordered a glass of each.

I asked Louis, who’s never worked in the wine business, to describe the Moscato. Here’s what he said: “Fruity. Sweet and fruity, actually. It tastes like apple, like a fruit juice but no fizz. I love it, it’s my kind of wine. I could drink this all night.”

The bartender nodded. (It was a slow lunch and he was hanging around, wanting to talk.)

“That’s exactly why we sell so much of it,” he said. “I do a lot of weddings too, and we go through cases of this stuff. Most weddings around here are outside, and it’s warm. People soak it up.”

“What about you?” I asked him. “Do you like the Moscato?”

“Yeah, I think it’s really smooth,” he said. “I’m not a wine aficionado, but this is so easy to drink. If I’m drinking beer, I tend to go for the heavier brews like lagers and stouts. But if I’m drinking red wine, I stay away from the big tannins. I can’t get it down. The Moscato hits the sweet spot.”

So Moscato d’Asti it was — for both of us, in the end. It just went better with the food I was having (spicy cauliflower taco, steamed brown rice, salsa verde). And I agree with the conclusion of my dining companions: fresh, cheap, easy, no fuss. No need to overthink it.

Now. Back to the office.

Quick Background Note: The Blue Collar Wine Guide is a 30-day, 30-wine experiment that looks at some of the world’s most popular, consumer-friendly wines. The idea is to take off my wine-writer shoes and stand instead in the shoes of Jane-and-Joe-in-front-of-a-wall-of-wine. Thank you for reading today’s post!