Day 23: Cupcake Prosecco
For a series about wines that people really drink, and drink a lot, it’s hard to bypass Cupcake.
Cupcake Chardonnay is the house wine of more friends than I would have guessed — it’s recognizable and familiar and nearly ubiquitous (meaning easily found on supermarket shelves), plus it sells for $10 or less. It’s reliable and a very known entity.
It’s the Cupcake Prosecco, though, that generates the excitement, especially among the younger crowd.
“Oh we love Cupcake Prosecco,” a friend told me, with emphasis. “It’s the one wine we keep on-hand at home, all the time.”
“I have to have Cupcake Prosecco,” another friend said. “Otherwise, we couldn’t make mimosas.”
That was a surprisingly common refrain, that’s one reason why this Prosecco is so popular: it mixes well with orange juice, most often for weekend brunches.
But it isn’t only the Cupcake Prosecco that gets mixed into something else. It also isn’t every brand that’s comfortable with their wine being used in recipes for both food and cocktails.
Yet Cupcake embraces, steers, and even encourages the integration of its wine into various “lifestyle moments” that go well beyond a glass of wine or even mimosas.
There’s a Cupcake Book Club, for example, where the Red Velvet label is paired with Gone Girl. There are DIY instructions for sea shell wine stoppers. There are recipes for Pumpkin Mulled Wine, made with Cupcake Pinot Noir, and Red White Cranberry Relish, made with the Black Forest. And etc.
“Get over yourself,” is what we used to say (snarkily) to people who take themselves way too seriously, and that’s what’s come to mind as I’ve been learning more about the Cupcake brand.
Cupcake is very much over itself. In a good way, and I’m sure that’s one of the things that’s making it so popular.
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!
