Moscato wine is best served chilled – almost always. This does vary between grapes and wines, but the stone fruit taste profile applies as at least a backdrop in most Moscato wines. The main flavors of Moscato are stone fruits: think apricots, mandarines, nectarines and orange. In other words, a popular production method for late harvest dessert wine. Curiously, this book describes the Muscat wine as wine extract from muscat raisins. However, the first official mentioning of the Muscat grape was in the Latin works of the English scholar Bartholomeus Anglicus, somewhere in the 1230s. This could make sense – figures such as the Roman writers Columella and Plinty the Elder have described Muscat grape varieties as sweet, with a musky aroma and – apparently – attractive to bees. According to this theory, it was the Greeks and Romans who first grew Moscato in 800 BC-600 AD. Pierre Galet, the father of ampelography (the classification of grape vines, that is), believed that the Muscat varieties family was cultivated during classic antiquity. There’s even a legend about Cleopatra drinking Muscat wine! Other scientists think differently, however. According to some sources, the Muscat grapes date as far back as the Persians and ancient Egyptians – so early antiquity, between 30 BC, at least. There are tons of theories about where the Muscat grape originates. Who knows? Let’s take an aside here to delve into where the grape itself originated from. Some go even further, associating Muscat grape with the city of Muscat on the Gulf of Oman, or with the Greek city of Moschato, southwest of Athens. Today, the Italian version of the word – mosca (fly) – is associated with the fruit flies that circle the grape. The general theory is that the name comes from the Persian word muchk, similar to the Greek word moskos / Latin muscus. The stories about where Muscat got its name are as numerous as the theories behind its origins. And each country will have their own way of naming their own variety. While there are variations in the specific grapes grown between countries, they all come from the ‘Muscat’ family of grapes. All of these names are just ways that different wine growing cultures have referred to the types of Muscat grapes that they grow. Generally speaking, Muscat and Moscato is the same thing. ‘Muscat’, I hear you say? Yes, that’s another confusing thing about these wines. Most Muscat wines come from Alsace in France, Piedmonte in Italy, the United States or Australia, but Portugal and Germany are also big on these wines. Where Moscato is grown, too, affects the taste. This grape is only one of dozens of Moscato varieties, however. The oldest and most popular grape of the Moscato family is Moscato Bianco. The grapes range in color from green to dark red, and many Moscato wines you’d find on the shelf are blends of various different Moscato grapes. You can also distinguish Moscato wines by their aroma – flora, spice, and honey. Moscato wines tend to have a low alcohol content, a light palate and come at a reasonable price. And of course, pairing Moscato with cheese is the stuff that dreams are made of! It’s no secret that Moscato can work wonders with carefully selected dishes, especially ones that involve aperitivos at the table or light seafood dishes. Its for this reason that Moscato wines are very popular as dessert wines. The natural sweetness of the grape, combined with a wine production that includes stopping the fermentation process early, produces wines with a significant content of residual sugar.
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