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Champagne is acknowledged as the absolutely best sparkling wine in the world. It’s a fact. It’s startlingly expensive and yet the market for it is buoyant. I love a glass of champagne, on the right occasion, but I rarely want two glasses, because it is so searingly dry and acidic.
There are three solutions to this. The first is to buy demi sec champagne, which is nowhere near sweet, but doesn’t catch your throat with dryness the way brut does. The second is to buy New World sparkling wine, which is just a little sweeter and has the benefit of being cheaper, although it’s not by any stretch actually cheap. The third is not to buy sparkling wine at all because if you spend £10 to £30 on still wine you really get your bells rung.
However, at the end of the year, sparkling wine is an absolute must and there are some fabulous special offers on. Oddbins has 20% off all wines they sell exclusively and nationally, if you buy 6 or more. Majestic has an astonishing range of sparkling wines and champagne reduced by 25%, 33% and even 50% for Canard Duchene, which is a lovely sparkler. Thresher is still running the 3 for 2 offer, which really reduces prices.
We tried a small range of sparkling wines from Australia and New Zealand. All had had their second fermentation in bottle, in the style used in champagne, which we now have to call traditional, rather than champenoise. Marks & Spencer’s Bluff Hill Brut, which is from New Zealand and is made by Montana, is £7.99. It had a very attractive yeasty, bready smell and was beautifully tasty. While it was definitely dry, it didn’t have the searing aridity of some. It tasted of apples and we loved it.
Jacob’s Creek Chardonnay/Pinot Grigio is £7.99 from Waitrose, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s, £7.94 at Tesco and £8.99 or £5.99 at Thresher. The smell wasn’t great, but sparkling wine is rarely about smell. It had a confected whiff of pink shrimp sweets. It was light in the mouth and not quite dry, but very easy and pleasant to drink. The taste lasted well.
Pelorus Vintage 2001, which is £16.99 or £13.59 from Majestic, is made by Cloudy Bay in New Zealand. It had a pleasant, fruity smell, slightly marred by an initial whiff of sulphur. It had a lot more texture and grip than the others, which lost it points. A good wine for wine aficionados but a pointless waste of money for a large, mixed group. It was long lasting and pretty dry.
Greenpoint Vintage 2002 is £12.99 from Waitrose and Tesco. It smelt of crème soda and tasted of grapefruit pith. Pelorus NV is £17.99 or £11.99 at Thresher and £14.99 or £11.99 at Majestic. It had a simple lemony smell and was clean, simple and lemony in the mouth. David said he’d be really disappointed if he’d shelled out good money for it. We also tried Wyndham Estate Bin 555 Sparkling Shiraz, which is £7.99 from Morrisons. We weren’t impressed and my daughter summed it up nicely. She said “it’s weird” which is a fairly succinct tasting note.