Il Conte Stella Rosa Moscoto d'Asti

One of the things I love best about doing reviews is all the things I am learning about wine, how its made, the different grapes, and all the little nuances that go along with wine. Seriously y'all, I am on this journey with you. Which is why I wanted to start this blog to begin with. This week I've learned so much in writing this for you. If you just sit down and google things you find on the bottle you can go down a serious rabbit hole of knowledge. Anywho, this week I'm reviewing a brand of one of my all time favorite styles of wine - the granddaddy of grapes, Mr. Moscato himself. This is my default setting and moscato will always be close to my heart. Whether I'm shopping for others or for sipping (let's be honest, chugging) when I get home from a long day of work, it is moscato that makes my mouth smile. I prefer a slight sparkle on it, but to be honest I'm not that picky as long as it's cold and sweet. Because I drink moscato so often in so many different brands, I'm a bit better at picking out certain flavors and critiques of it. Therefore, know that even though I gave this wine (*spoiler alert*) a Meh, it's still drinkable and good. It's won lots of awards, it just doesn't compare to my favorite moscatos. I will expand on this below, but don't take this one off your list to try just yet.

Name: Stella Rosa Moscato D'asti

Price: Around $9

Alcohol Content: 5.5%

Residual Sugar: 12.5%

Vintage: 2017

TLDR: Meh

Winery: Stella Rosa Wines are part of the RIboli Family Wines (see last post!). The Stella Rosa line is imported from Piedmont Italy, known for their muscat grapes - the grandaddy of wine grapes, but more on that later. You'll see on the bottle they have the D.O.C.G designation, which is a certification on Italian wines indicating the wine makers adhered to the strictest regulations and is geographically authentic. The D.O.C.G is the highest of 3 regulation standards (read more on these here).

Varietal: Ahh the Magnificent Muscat grape. If grapes had souls, this one would be the sweetest little grape around, and the oldest soul you ever met. Muscat grapes started it all thousands of years ago, and it is the oldest known wine grape. Now you may have noticed that this wine is a Moscato d'Asti. What is the difference between moscato and moscato d'Asti you ask? I asked the same thing and went on a knowledge journey that lasted longer than the bottle of wine. Basically, moscato d'Asti is made from Muscat's relative - Muscat blanc a petits grains. It's made only in Piedmont, Italy and is known for it's sweetness, lightness, and low alcohol content.

Bottle Description: "Grapes for our delicious Moscato d'Asti are harvested from beautiful vineyard from beautiful vineyards located in the northern Italian countryside. A refreshing white with flavors of pear and apple. Serve chilled with fresh fruit, cheese, spicy cuisine, and desserts."

Color: Medium Straw

Nose: It's pleasant to smell. I get pear and apples on the nose, with a small hint of pepper and spice.

Taste: I'm not sure if I just got a bad bottle or maybe 2017 was a bad year, but this moscato is supposed to be slightly sparkling. There were no bubbles, and it had that odd flat taste like it was opened yesterday and sat out on the counter, which left the taste very acidic and flabby. It had a pleasant pear juice flavor and reminded me of flowers, but I couldn't put a name to which one. I got a hint of apricot also. Bodie thought it was good, but did notice the flatness as well. There was zero tannin and and very light bodied. It was a bit off balance. It was howerver, very sweet. Full disclosure I am not a huge pear juice person, so this may contribute to the meh I am feeling about it. I purposely don't read the back of the bottle before I do a tasting to challenge myself to pick out the flavors on my pallete without influences (plus half the time whoever wrote the back of the bottle hasn't actually tasted the wine), so I was unprepared for the onslaught of pear. Nevertheless, the back of this bottle is spot on.

Finish: The finish was uncomfortably long for me. It left my mouth tasting like I just bit into a pear covered in honey. Again, I'm not a pear person.

Food Pairing: I drank this as soon as I got home from work. What can I say, it had been a long day. Basically, this means that there was no dinner to pair it with yet, and I was not in the mood to dig around to find a spicy, sweet, and cheese pairing. No. This was a job for hot cheetos. And I loved it. Despite not liking the wine alone, I can dig this moscato with the cheetos, which I'm pretty sure is a hard wine pairing in general so points to Stella Rosa. It turns the wine into a sweet water that soothes the burn of the hot cheeto dust. 10/10 would recommend. I could drink it again if I was binging on a bag of hot cheetos, which I don't do often enough to buy another bottle.

Let us know what you think of our review in the comments. We'd love to hear what you like, what you didn't like, or suggestions for other wines to try.