Category:Sparkling wine

Bubbly, one more time

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

A roundup of suggestions for the New Year ?s holiday from some of the leading authorities in the cyber-ether:

? Gil Kulers spares no expense when discussing champagne, which means the real stuff from the Champagne region of France.

? Less expensive sparkling wine from the San Francisco Chronicle.

? Budget bubbly from Good Wine Under $20, where Wine Curmudgeon favorite Gruet shows up.

? My take on champagne and sparkling wine for the holidays, as well as that of my pal Dave McIntyre: finding bargains among the most expensive bubbly and a look at some less expensive wines.

Holiday champagne and sparkling wine

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Champagne prices are putting a chill on bubbly sales. Know who won ?t have much to celebrate this holiday season? The companies that produce champagne and sparkling wine. The last two months of the year account for about one-quarter of all bubbly sales, and this year was already looking flat (sorry ? the Wine Curmudgeon couldn ?t help himself) before the fall ?s stock market meltdown. Champagne sales had dropped 17 percent in the first six months of this year, mostly because the weak dollar drove up prices.

I saw this first hand. My favorite champagne, Ruinart, has gone up 20 percent this year, and I won ?t be buying any. At $70, it ?s a luxury. At $84, it ?s an extravagance.

But that doesn ?t mean we need to do without bubbly over the next couple of weeks. There is plenty of quality wine available, and at more than reasonable prices. And you don ?t even have to buy Spanish to save money, which seems to indicate that retailers and producers that aren ?t French are trying to step into the market void.

After the jump, some bubbly basics as well as some sparklers to try this season:

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Wine of the week: Segura Viudas Brut Rose NV

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

imageHow much did the Wine Curmudgeon like this Segura Viudas? I went back to the store and bought a second bottle the next day.

This is classic cheap wine, as well as pretty good bubbly in its own right. It ?s $10 and well made, balanced, bone dry and fruity, with an almost pinot noir berry-like flavor. Which is a neat trick, since it doesn ?t have any pinot in it.

Segura Viudas is best known for its more expensive sparkler, the bottle with the pewter fittings (which is even more dry than this). It ?s part of the Freixenet cava empire (cava being the term for Spanish sparkling wine), and I don ?t know that I ?ve had a Freixenet bubbly that didn ?t have something to recommend it. Serve this on its own for holiday toasts or with seafood (lobster rolls would be terrific) or roast chicken.

Wine of the week: Cristalino Rose NV

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

Cris 2
The high temperature here has been 100 degrees or more for most of the past month, which makes the Wine Curmudgeon even crankier than usual. Which is pretty cranky,

So what do I do on a sun-blaring, lawn-scorching Tuesday evening after a long, trying day of dealing with editors? Open a bottle of Cristalino ?s rose (about $8), of course.

First, it ?s cheap, which always cheers me up. Second, it ?s bubbles, which cheers me up even more. Third, it ?s well-made, delicious, cheap bubbles, which cheers me up most of all. The rose is bone dry, refreshing and brisk, with low alcohol, a bit of strawberry and caramel, and lots of fizz. I ?m not exaggerating: It ?s amazing how much better this wine makes me feel.

And I ?m not the only who feels that way. Cristalino sparklers have won just about every award possible from those of us who care about good cheap wine, from my $10 Hall of Fame to the New York Times to the Wine Magazines (as difficult as that is to believe). Drink this well-chilled, and serve it with everything from those Tuesday night leftovers to Indian or Thai (it ?s more than fruity enough for the spice) to big salads.

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$70 wine: When is it really worth it?

by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On

image I was drinking wine with a couple of friends last weekend and mentioned that they would enjoy the sparkling wine. One of them took a sip and said, yes, that was pretty good. But it doesn’t taste like one of your $10 wines, she said. (Now I know how actors feel when they get stereotyped.)

The wine, of course, was not $10. It was Ruinart, perhaps my favorite bubbly and not cheap at all at $70. And, to add insult to injury to my reputation, the other bottle of wine that night was Domaine Borgeot Puligny-Montrachet Les Charmes 1999, which cost around $65.

Which raises the question: Is there something to these wines that makes them worth that much money? The answer is yes, but the point is not how much they cost, but what they deliver.

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