If Silvio Berlusconi and Romano Prodi were wines, and not respectively the center-right and center-left candidates for premier, the first would be champagne-like Franciacorta and the second the more down-to-earth Lambrusco.
This according to a poll taken by the Italian website WineNews and the website of Vinitaly, Italy's leading trade fair which opens in Verona next month.
The websites recently posted the question "which wines are most like the candidates" and received over 2,000 replies.
According to 57% of the answers, Berlusconi was like Franciacorta because he was "sparkling, exuberant, effervescent and distinctive" and was from the Lombardy region where "Little France" is located. However, some of the premier's detractors observed he was like Franciacorta because the sparkling wine was trying to be something it was not: Champagne.
Lambrusco was the obvious choice for Prodi with 71% of the replies indicating this red sparkling wine because, like the ex-European commission president, it comes from Italy's Emilia Romagna region and is often served with the regional cold cut mortadella, a derogatory nickname given to Prodi. The wine was also chosen because it was a simple and popular wine which everyone liked because it did not pretend to be anything more than what it was.
Other replies likened Berlusconi to Italy's famous, 'designer' wines because, like the premier, they were good at selling their image and were expensive, thus reserved for an elite.
Prodi, on the other hand, was considered by some to be like the Italian dessert wine passito or Marsala, because they were best enjoyed in small doses and drunk slowly, leaving ample time for thought. However, a fair percentage of poll replies were somewhat irreverent towards Berlusconi and Prodi, comparing them to
the methanol-laced wine which killed almost 30 people and crippled the Italian wine industry 20 years ago.
Others said the candidates were more like corked wine, cheap wine in paper cartons and even wine vinegar.
