Everything You Need to Know About Prosecco | MMI

Prosecco is one of those drinks everybody loves, and almost nobody fully understands. We pour it, we toast with it, we splash it into spritzes, but ask most people what it actually is, or why one bottle says Brut and another says Extra Dry, and you'll get a shrug and a nervous sip.

So consider this your complete guide. Everything worth knowing about Prosecco, from the grape in the bottle to the science of the bubbles, answered clearly. By the end, you'll understand it properly and choose your next bottle with total confidence. Let's pop the cork.

Interesting bit of trivia, habibi: the grape was actually renamed. It used to be called Prosecco itself, but in 2009 Italian authorities renamed the variety "Glera" and reserved the word "Prosecco" for the protected wine region, a clever move to stop producers elsewhere in the world slapping "Prosecco" on their bottles. So Prosecco is now a place and a product, not a grape.

One more label to know: most Prosecco you'll find is Spumante, meaning fully sparkling with a lively fizz. You may also spot Frizzante, which is lightly sparkling with softer bubbles. Same grape, same region, just a different level of sparkle.

Grapes

Prosecco is mostly Glera. Champagne uses Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier.

Method

This is the crucial one, and it's worth understanding properly (more below).

Flavour

Prosecco is fresh, fruity, and floral. Champagne is richer, with toasty, biscuity, bread-like notes.

Price

Because of that different method, Prosecco is generally more affordable, a big part of its everyday charm.

Neither is better, habibi. Champagne is the special-occasion classic, Prosecco is the joyful any-day sparkler. Different drinks for different moments.

Not quite. All Prosecco is sparkling wine, but not all sparkling wine is Prosecco. "Sparkling wine" is the broad umbrella term for any wine with bubbles, which includes Champagne (France), Cava (Spain), and Prosecco (Italy), among many others. Prosecco is simply one specific, and especially beloved, member of the sparkling wine family.

Now, this often gets described as the "cheaper" method, and yes, it's more efficient than Champagne's bottle fermentation. But that misses the real point, habibi. The tank method is used because it suits the grape. Glera is prized for its delicate, fresh, floral, fruit-forward aromas, all that green apple, pear, and white blossom. The Charmat method preserves exactly those qualities. Champagne's bottle-fermentation method, by contrast, develops deep, yeasty, brioche-like flavours that would completely overwhelm Glera's gentle character. So Prosecco isn't made this way to cut corners; it's made this way because it's the right method to capture what makes Glera special. The method serves the grape, not the other way around.

Among the most highly regarded expressions are DOCG Proseccos from Conegliano, whose steep, hand-harvested vineyards produce the most refined and complex Prosecco of all. These hills are so significant they were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019. As a rule of thumb: DOC is your lovely, reliable everyday Prosecco; DOCG is where you look when you want to trade up for something special.

Read that again, habibi, because here's the twist: "Extra Dry" is actually sweeter than "Brut." It sounds like nonsense, but there's a reason: the term "dry" here is a hangover from older wine language, where it described the wine's overall style rather than its sugar level.

In practice, the two you'll meet most often are Brut and Extra Dry:

Brut contains up to 12 grams of residual sugar per litre. It's the crisp, clean, driest common style, brilliant with food and the choice for anyone who likes minimal sweetness.

Extra Dry sits at 12 to 17 grams per litre, so it's a touch rounder and fruitier. It's actually the style most people picture when they think "classic Prosecco," and it's wonderfully approachable.

The very driest styles (Brut Nature and Extra Brut) are far less common in Prosecco, and anything labelled Dry is, confusingly, the sweetest you'll typically find. Neither Brut nor Extra Dry is better, they're just for different moods. Now you know which one you actually want.

Short answer, habibi: no, and here's the genuine reason why, because it ties everything above together.

Unlike vintage Champagne or a serious still wine, Prosecco is made to be enjoyed young, ideally within a year or two of release. That same Charmat method that locks in all those fresh, floral, fruity aromas doesn't build the structure or the developed, nutty, autolytic complexity that allows a wine to improve over years in a cellar. Prosecco's entire charm is its youthful freshness. Age it, and you won't develop anything new, you'll just watch those lovely primary fruit notes fade away.

So don't cellar it. Buy it fresh, chill it, drink it. Prosecco is a wine that celebrates the here and now, and that's precisely the point of it.

That said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a flute if that's what you love, it keeps the bubbles looking elegant and it's still perfectly good practice. It's your glass, habibi, drink how you enjoy it.

And once it's open? Sealed with a proper sparkling wine stopper and kept in the fridge, Prosecco holds its fizz for about one to three days. Without a stopper, it'll be flat by tomorrow, so the most sensible option is simply to finish the bottle. For the good of the wine, naturally.

Prosecco is far more diverse than most people realise. It's not just "the cheap fizz", it's a whole world of styles, from crisp Brut to fruity Extra Dry to complex DOCG. Once you understand the labels, the method, and the styles, choosing the right bottle for any occasion becomes genuinely easy, and a lot more fun.

Find a wonderful range of Prosecco and other sparkling wines at MMI, in-store or via the MMI Cheers Club App, delivered chilled to your door in two hours.

Now go chill a bottle, habibi. Cheers, and sip responsibly.