Christine Teigen and John Legend kick back with Martini Moscato d’Asti at a party in LA last summer. (
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(David Beckman/Wire Image; Jesse Grant/Wire Image)
Last October, the Toronto-born, multiplatinum rapper Drake celebrated his 25th birthday in style with a big bash at Tao nightclub in Las Vegas.
But it’s not a bottle of Cristal that the cameras caught him hoisting. Rather, it’s a bottle of Martini & Rossi Moscato d’Asti (widely available for about $10).
A decade ago, hip-hop culture embraced Courvoisier, the luxury cognac. Then it was Cristal, the ultra-pricey Champagne in the clear glass bottle touted by Jay-Z. And now it’s the turn of moscato, a white wine with seductive floral aromas and a faint spritz that make a chilled glass just right for spring sipping.
For a wine so gentle — at as little as 5 percent alcohol, it carries less kick than many beer brands — moscato has been coming on like gangbusters: US sales were up an amazing 70 percent last year over 2010. Yellow Tail, the huge Australian brand, expects its moscato sales to jump from 475,000 cases in 2011 to 700,000 cases this year.
Credit much of that sizzle to the hip-hop world. Moscato fans include Lil’ Kim, Waka Flocka Flame, Ab-Soul (“When things get hard to swallow/We need a bottle of moscato”) and Kanye West.
But “what really broke moscato into hip-hop culture,” says music journalist Jasmine Waters (a k a Jas Fly), 31, was Drake’s 2009 track, “Do It Now,” which starts with these lines: “It’s a celebration, clap, clap, bravo/lobster and shrimp and a glass of moscato/for the girl who’s a student and her friend who’s a model.”
“Rappers are always looking for that new nuance in the consumption of goods,” says Waters, a writer for Vibe magazine. “There’s a phrase that Drake uses: ‘Let me put you on to this.’ Right now, we’re being put on to moscato.”
But hip-hop energy is only a part of the story of moscato’s upswing. In the wine section of the Whole Foods on the Upper West Side, not exactly a stronghold of hip-hop culture, you can count more than a dozen wines labeled moscato. One of them, called Bartenura, selling for about $15, is a kosher version in a deep blue bottle. It’s expected to sell 400,000 cases this year, a record for any kosher wine.
According to Nathan Herzog of brand owner Royal Wine, 85 percent of Bartenura buyers don’t know or care that it’s kosher, or that it’s named for a 15th-century
Italian rabbi. They just know what they like.
At the wine shop Harlem Vintage on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, what the clientele likes is “whatever is new and sweet,” says manager Tania Sanchez. Her current order of 40 cases of Bartenura is sold out, and she’s waiting for more. Who’s buying all that moscato? “People who are migrating up from white zinfandel because they’re tired of the taste of Jolly Rancher candy,” says Christy Canterbury, a Manhattan-based wine consultant.
Looking at figures for 2011, Jennifer Pagano, research director for the California-based Wine Market Council, estimates that 60 percent of moscato drinkers are female, and a very high 46 percent are millennials (ages 21 to 34).
There’s a feeling in snobbier circles that slightly fizzy, sweet and inexpensive moscato ought to be banished from sophisticated sipping spots. (Even most top-rung moscato hovers at around only $20.) After all, Asti Spumante — that ’70s plonk — is made from moscato grapes. But that tacky association is dropping as the quality improves, and many of New York’s finest food establishments are happy to serve it. Try it out in a corner stand at La Piazza in the heart of Eataly on West 23rd Street. For $10, you’ll get a glass of Asti (the brand varies, but a favorite is Mondori), along with Parmigiano-Reggiano slivers and breadsticks.
“Moscato is a wine we want to sip outdoors on the first day we wear our tank tops,” says Carla Rzeszewski, wine director for three cutting-edge restaurants: the Breslin, the John Dory and the Spotted Pig.
Fans say it quickens the appetite before dinner. At the end of the meal, you can pour it over a sliced, ripe peach. At the John Dory, Rzeszewski recommends sipping it with currant-filled Eccles cake, a house specialty. And if brunch includes fruit-topped pancakes, a second glass is called for. You’ll never miss your mimosa.