Confessions of a man who left Prosecco—and never looked back
I used to believe in order.
I worked in hospitality in Veneto, the land of sharp tailoring, sharper accounting, and Prosecco—the gentle fizz that props up every Mimosa, Spritz, and morning-after apology across Italy. It was our clockwork celebration. Tight bubbles, tight margins. You knew what to expect—light, floral, safe. Like being kissed on both cheeks by a maître d’ who knows your birth year and tax code.
We were the kingdom of Palladio: symmetry, arches, balance. Even the hangovers were elegant.
And then I went to Georgia.
God help me.
It started with a bottle called Mamastan. Sounds like a Balkan nightclub, right?
It isn’t.
It’s a Pet-Nat. A naturally sparkling wine. And if Prosecco is an architectural blueprint, Mamastan is the wrecking ball that sings karaoke while swinging.
I opened the bottle outdoors—someone warned me. Good thing. It hissed like it had unresolved trauma. No cage, no cork—the crown cap popped like a champagne cork with a vendetta.
What hit my glass wasn’t a by-now popular refinement. It was transparent, alive, vibrating with wild yeast and pagan energy. Made from Tsolikouri, Tsitska, and Krakhuna, grapes whose names sound like forest spirits you shouldn’t wake after sunset.
The first sip?
Electric. Fermented orchard. Bruised pear. Lemon zest. Fennel seeds, smuggled in a monk’s robe. A tiny slap of salt.
Nothing was added. No sugar, no sulfur, no apology.
This wasn’t wine.
This was fermentation with an attitude problem.
The Venetians I used to serve would’ve spat it out—or sued. But I stood there in a Georgian garden, grinning like a man who’d just remembered his first crime. Because beneath that wildness, there was structure. Purpose. Like a revolutionary in formalwear.
Mamastan didn’t just sparkle.
It crackled like it knew something about me I didn’t.
In Veneto, we design everything: our wines, our cities, our destinies. In Georgia, they bury things underground and wait. Sometimes it’s wine. Sometimes it’s truth.
By the end of the bottle, I wasn’t thinking of Spritzes.
I was thinking of running barefoot through vines, shouting something in Tsolikouri.
Mamastan had rewired me.
I still love Prosecco—but now, it feels like small talk.
This… this is a wine that laughs at your résumé, drinks before noon and leaves the cork in your dreams.
And I? I will never unlearn what that bottle taught me.
