Hi, everyone and welcome to the show. This episode is made in collaboration with the Prosecco DOC Consortium.

After our talk with Tanja, I'm sure you all got to know a bit more about prosecco and the beautiful region it comes from.

Now let's connect with another one of our guests, Roger, who is not only representing Casa prosecco in China, but also the owner of a trendy restaurant on Gulangyu island, Xiamen. Hi, Roger.

Hi Lulu.

Welcome back to the show.

Haha, it’s been a pleasure.

So since we talked last time, what has been happening with Casa Prosecco, your restaurant and the general restaurant, food and beverage industry.

Well, we have really bad impact from the pandemic. It's been a really tough time for the restaurant owners during the period, but lucky to see we are slowly going through it.

Now we see some really, really good conditions gonna come in, shows up and then to have a better economic situation right now. For our restaurant, it was really quiet, people are afraid to go out, have dinner or something. Now we get back to normal, so I'm happy to see that this is or a good sign for the future. I'm quite happy with that.

Yeah, I mean good to know that. But would you say... you said it's back to normal, but I just want to know how has this, obviously Covid has a lot of impact on people in all aspects, so have your customers changed somehow like their spending habits or their preferences? For example, have they been spending more after everything opened up? Have they been celebrating more or are they more cautious about spending money? What would you say?

This is a great question because it's some sort of controversy in between because after such a long period of lockdown and people were not able to go out freely to have a good time together with a friend or any events.

Now they are free to go, so they sort of really happy with that. When they come to our restaurant, I also found out it's a better condition compared to before, however, the purchasing power looks like it goes down. I mean the whole economic situation, it's not really going back to normal, but I'm looking forward to see that, but nowadays if people wanted to buy some champagne, you know the customer used to have champagnes, now they don't really have the money, they would say, okay, show me something really happy stuff and not too expensive. You know what I mean, so now comes to the realistic that people would like to have some fun, they love to and eager to have some fun, but don't cost me too much.

Well, prosecco now becomes a more affordable and approachable option I guess.

That is exactly what I'm going to say that, now the happy style and they cost less and you can spend less for a longer period of happiness if you know what I mean.

That's…

For example a champagne bottle, in at least you pay like 600 or 800 per bottle for champagne, right, now with prosecco, 200 in my restaurant at most. If go back to home in a personal parties, you pay just 100 something for the prosecco, so easy to have fun.

Exactly. Yeah, I think that's what Tanja mentioned as well, prosecco is affordable, approachable, and just fun as well.

Yeah. We don't say it's a cheap happiness, but it's a worthy happiness and it costs you less.

Yeah, I would say the same level of fun without breaking the bank.

This is one of the lovely descriptions. I love that.

Yeah, having said that, let's bring it back a on a happier note. Are there any new prosecco events that you're planning for the future or you have done since we talked last time?

A great question. I just had a prosecco master class and the road show last 2 weeks in Shenzhen, I just finished that, and it's amazing, I love it. I can describe it from two aspects.

First is the people who participate the master class of the prosecco, I think they become more and more professional, what I mean professional, they know more about prosecco.

But can I just ask that when you said master class, so who were the audience? Were they just normal people or people in the business?

They are in the industries, they are…

In the industries

Importers or distributors, or they are restaurant owners, bar owners or they are some other sales channels, they even the hotel restaurant managers, this sort of person and experts what I saying, these people used to have we do that every year the master class in different cities, and then compared to before, I found out they know prosecco quite a lot already, they eager to learn.

So when it comes to the class, I normally started from the very beginning, history and come back to the brand and all other things, like quite a lot of students they come to the point ask me this statistic levels, what's of the acidity levels? The really, really serious question.

The more informed questions.

Yes, I was stunned, I say, guys relax, chill out, this is prosecco. Ok. Don’t count it, let’s just drink it, have some fun.

Don’t make it complicated.

Yeah, exactly. You will feel a lot more happy when I tell you there's like more acidity in there or sugar level, so I'm happy I mean they getting to know it. So especially when we have the prosecco rose coming into the market 2 years ago, and we have the officially we have a Pinot Noir into the Glera.

So now we have the rose prosecco. It looks pink, it's lovely, it's sexy, and it tastes a little bit more complex from the wine and itself, so girls love them.

Is that your expert’s opinion like prosecco rose is more complex than prosecco?

For sure, yeah.

I never knew that, I'm learning this for the first time.

Just imagine, give yourself a picture. Yeah, so you know pinot noir is one of the most noble grape, wine grape in the world, right? From pinot noir you get Romanee-Conti which is the most expensive red wine in the world.

Now you're putting this grape into the prosecco and think about the complicity. But however, you think from the other side that pinot noir give you a really lovely color, right? And with the skin infused, so you get a little bit tannin and then give it of course you're gonna give it a little bit more complicity in there.

So you have the taste of some strawberry, raspberry, you know these all things getting into those green apple, pineapple, these are the flavors we used to have.

Wow.

Yeah.

This is completely new to me. I thought the pink color means you just probably like less complex, it's more fun.

No, actually not, because with this color you don't add color into it, right? So you got to think of some way to have a nature color in there. By doing that you got to put a red grape, always a black grape in there.

With the skin infused, are less than 2 days or 1 day, then you extract some colors out of it. So those red color merge with those white wine and comes with a really lovely sexy pink. They get people imagination going on while you are drinking with the bubble.

It's a very sexy color.

It is. You know what I mean the sexy in different ways because some are really like pink, some are deep pink.

Yeah, it depends how you look at it. What sort of drunkness degree you were in to look at this pink, sexy. Yeah.

It's like that blush on a girl's face when she's had a few drinks.

I love what you described. This is very accurate, you know that blush is also one of them... when you're talking about blush, and this is actually one of the wine making technique when we're doing the fermenting, the blush.

Wow.

So we have seven ways to extract the red color out of the grape into the rosé wines in Provence.

So seven ways, one of these called blush exactly what you're saying, genius .

Yeah. I mean does that mean like taste wise, if we're more specific, you said it adds a little bit…Pinot noir adds a little bit tannin in it, so does it taste a little bit sharper than regular prosecco?

It takes away some sharpness of the acidity out of it, so when it comes to the food and wine matching, and rosé may getting a lot more friendly than the normal prosecco because it adds out the complicity, takes away some acidity and more different fruity...so fruitiness, yes, that actually makes it easier to go with some more food, especially some Sichuan food. Yes.

So it can be paired with spicy food?

That's exactly what I'm saying, spiciness. And also, if you goes back to Cantonese, now it's a good matching; I don't think it's a great meeting, it's matching, but it's not a great matching.

But now go back to Cantonese food because while I was in Shenzhen, we had a big bottle of the prosecco rosé , go to the dimsum点心 place. It's amazing.

I love dimsum, so dimsum... now you can pair dimsum with rosé prosecco.

Exactly, I mean with the normal prosecco it’s already quite good. But now take away those sharpness of acidity, it's a lot more friendly. Yeah.

I would definitely try that.

Please do.

Yeah. I know for a fact that like last time you mentioned your restaurant of wide selection of cocktails as well. I just want to ask you about because I've already talked to many other people about prosecco cocktails, the mixology, I just wanna say, do you have any special mixology tips for prosecco rosé, or do you ever put a prosecco rosé into a cocktail?

That is a brilliant question.

You know what, so prosecco is more like a pure, it's like a spring water to me, but with quite a lot of fruits in there and flowers, floral, these sorts of things in there.

If I wanted to prosecco into any cocktails as part of it, and I actually will replace anything any cocktails which needs to have soda water. I will replace soda water with prosecco, it gives the character a lot more fruitiness, refreshness, acidity, a lot more balances in there, that makes the whole cocktail a lot more better if you put soda before, now try prosecco, you can replace it anywhere.

This is my personal point of view. So back in Italy, you can see people drink spritz, spritz alongside the water, right, so what do they do with the spritz? They have prosecco first, prosecco into the glass and then you add something, so you don't actually want to destroy that pure... pureness, those purity, you know this…

Of the prosecco.

You don't want to take it away, you add something onto it, so I don't really quite like to take it away. If I really want to do something, maybe I would love to have some cherry or strawberry. I just add them I split them into half and then just chop into my prosecco rosé. And I think that's quite…

Any sort of like berries, put berries in the prosecco rosé.

Berry, no citrus, just berry, because you won't change too much, you just give you a hint. And the hints goes really good. So I don't want to take it away, you know this is the spirit of the prosecco, any prosecco.

Because there already like a great cake you just put icing on the cake. Really?

Exactly. Yeah, true.

Ok. I think that's like...actually there are a lot of information and fun information about prosecco, especially prosecco rosé. As we're coming to the end of our talk with Roger, I would just like to ask what is on the horizon, what kind of new events are you planning or are you possibly going to have as a representative of Casa prosecco? What kind of new prosecco events are on the horizon?

Yes, we are actually going to have a bigger prosecco road show on the way because now it’s the time.

We've been doing the prosecco master class, events, different events for almost five more years over here in China with every one of them in Casa prosecco put a great effort into it. I think now it’s the time since this time I was in Shenzhen, I did this master class, I did this road show. I realized people are so enjoyed, I have like 10 or 12 brands of prosecco standing in front of them. They will say, wow, that's open. Are we serious opening so many prosecco bottles over here? Maybe so exciting and then they're holding a bottle. They want to open it by themselves. They pull into their own glass, they even try to mix the prosecco by themselves. They do the prosecco cocktail, the real one that mix the different prosecco together.

That sounds so fun.

It is. Eventually the road show become a personal show for everyone. They have their own imagination of the prosecco what it should be, what it should be in their life because this is a lifestyle and then prosecco is here to stimulate people's imagination and to actually to that goal, their desire, they are free to do whatever they want to, so there's a... prosecco is some sort of like freedom, icon to them.

To do away with inhibitions and then just like treat themselves.

Exactly. This is how it is in Italy right now presenting the spirit.

I blame the happy bubbles.

Exactly, so this one we say we are going to a bigger road show. We're gonna take more brands, then we’re inviting more people and then to come here and take 20 or 30 different brands of the prosecco, get people really into it. And I think this is going to be a happily ever after.

Sounds like a brilliant event. I mean I'm not in industry, well not yet, but I would love to participate in this type of events. It sounds so much fun.

You are definitely invited.

Thank you, Roger. Thank you. And I think we're gonna wrap up here. Thank you, Roger for coming to the show and sharing with us all these wonderful tips and Information about prosecco. And I have a bottle of prosecco rosé in the fridge, so I can't wait to open that one up.

Do it now, do it.

All right, and welcome to the show again and thank you for your participation. Thank you, Roger.

My pleasure again Lulu good bye.

Bye.