Malvasia di Casorzo d'Asti DOC

Piedmont's Pink Sparkling Secret Malvasia di Casorzo d'Asti is one of the rarest and most unusual wines of Piedmont — a naturally sweet, lightly sparkling red Malvasia produced in the hills around the village of Casorzo, straddling the border between the Asti and Alessandria provinces. It is made from the Malvasia di Casorzo grape, a pink-skinned variety of distinctly different character from the more widely planted white Malvasias, and it produces a wine of intensely perfumed, sweet, and lightly fizzy character that is unlike almost anything else in the Italian wine landscape.

The Grape Malvasia di Casorzo (sometimes called Malvasia Rossa di Casorzo) has pink-red skins that give the wine its characteristic deep cherry-rose colour. The variety is intensely aromatic — rose petal, strawberry, fresh raspberry, a hint of orange peel — and naturally high in sugar, making it ideally suited to the sweet and off-dry frizzante style for which the DOC is known.

The Flavor Profile Deep cherry-rose colour, gentle effervescence, intensely perfumed nose of rose petal, raspberry, and strawberry. On the palate: sweet but not cloying, with the natural acidity of the variety providing freshness and balance. Low alcohol (typically 5–7%). Best consumed very young.

Food Pairing Malvasia di Casorzo d'Asti is a classic Piedmontese dessert wine — paired with fresh strawberries and cream, panna cotta, light fruit tarts, and almond biscuits. Its low alcohol and sweetness also make it an appealing aperitivo for those who prefer aromatic, lighter styles.

The Critical Take Sweet, low-alcohol, lightly sparkling red is a category the international market has almost no vocabulary for, and Casorzo is one of the last places making it properly. Judged as a dessert wine it is too light; judged as a sparkling wine it is too sweet; judged as what it actually is — the thing Piedmontese families open at the end of a long lunch — it is close to perfect. The denomination covers a handful of villages and a few dozen hectares, production is falling, and the variety is grown essentially nowhere else. It is worth seeking out while it exists.

Benchmark Producers The growers of Casorzo, Grazzano Badoglio and Altavilla Monferrato, and the village cooperative, which between them make almost the whole of a very small denomination.

A Coloured Malvasia Almost every Malvasia in Italy is white; the Casorzo variety is one of a small handful with coloured skins, and it is genetically distinct from the others despite the shared family name. That anomaly is the whole reason the denomination exists.