Has Prosecco become a joke?

I recently read that a Cava producer has started selling its own “premium”, which I see as a tentative to stay away from the price war that is taking place in the category, Prosecco and I keep asking myself if I am the only one thinking that the Prosecco sage has become a joke. The whole word is crazy about Prosecco, the amount of cheap Prosecco being bottled and sold keeps going up, with wine drinkers wanting to pay less and less for it and plenty of bars and restaurants offering ice cold tasteless sparkling wine labelled as Prosecco, still the love for the wine is there.


Prosecco is still enjoying its honeymoon with wine drinkers all over the world and when in love we only see the good side, we can’t see any imperfection and are ready to accept everything until the day we wake up and realise how stupid we were and how much time we wasted for a love not worth our time. Yes, this is what I think will happen to Prosecco lovers the day, not too far away, the prices and quality would reach their lowest.


Everyone is jumping on the band wagon, each new Prosecco call itself “premium”, to justify a higher price and avoid becoming involved in the price war, despite all coming from the same wineries, because Prosecco, thanks to the EU, has to be produced in Italy, specifically 3 regions, with only a few wineries with the capacity to produce millions of bottles.


A couple of decades ago it was the Asti Spumante until the quality reached its lowest and the sugar its highest, and Spumante became and still is synonymous with cheap, sweet, Italian sparkling wine, if we were to offer Prosecco or Spumante, 9 people out of 10 will choose with no hesitation Prosecco without knowing that Prosecco is a spumante and the latter is simply a type of wine, Prosecco is a Spumante made with Glera grapes with a denomination, all other spumantes, with the exception of Franciacorta and Trento, have no denomination therefore, each wineries give them the name they like and are better than a cheap Prosecco.