See how they Sparkle

By Rob Bralow, Wine Post Editor

It seems so long ago, but for New Year's Eve I tasted three very different sparkling wines with my friends. I think this is going to become something of a tradition, to taste a number of wines with people on New Year's Eve. It is nice for a group that does not really want to go out to the bars on NYE. We like hanging out with each other and not binge drinking with one or two hundred strangers.

We like binge drinking by ourselves. And we like doing it with something better than Bud Light. Quick someone get me a Yuengling...

NV Bagrationi 1882 Classic Extra Dry, Country of Georgia - It is not often I see wines from lesser known regions like the Country of Georgia. This wine is made from the grape varieties of Chinebuli, Tsitska and Mtsvane grown in and around the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia. According to the winery, there is evidence of winemaking in the Country of Georgia dating to around 5,000 B.C.E. This wine is brimful of tropical fruit with undertones of brine. The taste is smooth olive and a little creamy. For me this wine does not linger long enough, but Leah enjoyed it.

NV Wyndham Estate Bin 555 Sparkling Shiraz, Southeastern Australia - It is wines like this that constantly remind me that there is no expertise that matters more than your own taste. My friend Bren who joined us on NYE enjoyed this wine best of the group. I do not taste a lot of Sparkling Shiraz, but the ones I have tasted did not impress me. This wine, while good, was still not something I would reach for with any consistency. It is a fun wine, something to open up and say, "I'll bet you've never had something like this." The wine had floral and raspberry aromas and tasted a little sweet, but had a nice balance. The tannins bothered me a little, but it was not unpleasant.

NV Casa Perini Moscatel Processo Asti, Italy - I am an absolute sucker for sweet wines from Asti. Seriously, they might be my favorite type of sparkling wine. Maybe it is because I grew up addicted to Coca Cola, but something sweet with enough acid to balance, and some tiny bubbles... yum! While the website is impossible for an english speaker to follow and find this wine, it is out there. I found this wine to have some sweet kiwi, raisons, and a little bit of bready yeast. The taste was all peaches and pears, with some citrus and raisons.

A Holiday Season that is still Sparkling

by Rob Bralow

This is the season to drink the bubbly. No really, there has never been a better time to spend money on sparkling wine. You will never get a better deal on the wine that is out there. A friend of mine who works in retail told me recently that the price wars on under way from the wineries who have the marketing dollars.

Are you having a holiday party this year? Maybe a New Year's party? The way the trends have been going lately, I would be surprised if most people will be going out and renting out bars, clubs, or restaurants for their parties. I foresee more home parties this year, more people spending less for their party, and more sales at the retail stores. Sparkling wine has taken a beating this year, Champagne especially. The producers that are going to survive are going to get behind their brands and give deals to the retailers selling the wine or have the prestige that an off year will not hurt them in the long run.

We'll see what happens.

The wines below I received as samples I recommend all of them. If I happen to receive more samples of sparkling wines between now and New Year's, I will do my best to taste them and review them before it is too late to buy them.

Saint-Hillaire Blanquette de Limoux Brut 2005, France - Bright and lovely, this French wine is so fresh that I can't imagine not enjoying this at any time of year. There is a bright and grassy quality to the nose and the taste is fresh green apple with wonderful dryness. Not enough to make me pucker but just enough to make me want to take another sip. And another. And another.

Vranken La Demoiselle de Champagne Tete de Cuvee Brut NV, France - Creamy and mild, with pear and a little bread. The taste is such an enjoyable combination of creamy pear and yellow apple with a little bit of brine to keep it balanced.

Vingna Dogarina Prosecco di Valdobbiadene Brut NV, Italy - Smells lightly lime and salt with a little bit of apple and bread. The yellow apple comes out in the taste, with a little lime, pear, and salt. Tastes like heaven when combined with a little bit of dark chocolate.


Marco Negri Moscato d'Asti 2008, Italy - I have to admit, I have a soft spot for Moscato d'Asti. With just a little bubble, a high sugar level and an inversely lower alcohol level, these wines are perfect for after dinner sipping. This one in particular is delicious. The smells in the glass remind me of perfume, lavender, and candied apple. The taste is sweet, but balanced with plenty of acidity.

Someone called Jacob

A while ago, I received a few samples from Jacob’s Creek. Jacob’s Creek is a winery located in Australia, in the Barossa Valley. They are not shy about the fact that they make a lot of wine. On the website it says that over 2,000,000 glasses of Jacob’s Creek are poured, daily.

I will let that sink in for a moment.

That is a heck of a lot of wine. By my estimates there are about 5 glasses of wine in a bottle (some say 4, others say 6… really it just depends on how large your glass is). That is 400,000 bottles of wine opened a day. That means Jacob’s Creek claims that there are 146,000,000 bottles (approximately 12.17 million cases) of wine from their winery opened a year.

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh!

Well, I was lucky enough to be sent a bottle of the Jacob’s Creek Brut Cuvée NV and a bottle of the Jacob’s Creek Reserve Pinot Noir 2006.

The sparkling wine was a bubbler. There were some medium to large bubbles that rushed to the surface the moment I poured the wine into my glass. It had some beautiful pear, white pepper, and bready aromas. Then there was an extreme granny smith apple flavors. The word zippy does not come close to covering it. Overall, decent but nothing I would buy myself.

The Pinot Noir had some heat coming from it. Smoky cherry, spicy raspberry and heat. Not much more I can say about it as the temperature of the wine coming out was too much for me to really get into it. I probably should have cooled this wine down in the fridge before tasting it, but… c’est la vie.

A nice sparkler from Alsace

I have been in somewhat of a celebratory mood, as I switch from one job to another. It is not that I feel particularly good about leaving the old job, but starting a new job is exciting.

Therefore, I feel that a little bit of bubbly is just what the doctor called for. I received a bottle of Domaine Albert Mann Cremant D'Alsace Brut NV (lot 34) a little while ago and now seemed to be the perfect time to open it.

A quick note about the term Cremant: Cremant is a label used for sparkling wines outside of the region of Champagne to denote a wine that was made using the Champagne method (methode champenoise/traditionnelle).

It is rare that I find myself really enjoying a sparkling wine. When I do find myself liking one, it usually turns out to be a Muscato D'Asti or other extremely sweet wine. I think I have been too affected by my upbringing through the Coca Cola culture.

Many of my female friends think I am crazy, as they all claim to love sparkling wines. Perhaps they do, or maybe they just like the prestige that a bottle with a cork that POPS brings to the table. At the last Wine Spectator California Wine Experience, I had the opportunity to wander around with one of my wine mentors (there have been quite a few) and he told me that it had taken him a while to get into bubblies as well. However, he had an epiphany that bubbly was just another wine and it changed his perspective.

All that said, I really enjoyed the Albert Mann. It balanced beautifully between the fruity sweetness I love and the drying acidity of the bubbles. It is definitely a wine made for food and I was lucky enough to have a pan fried chicken with broccoli and potato crisps on hand. The wine was very pleasantly accented with apple and lemon flavors. The bubbles brought a little bitterness which nicely balanced the fruit. There was a little tartness to it, but I think the food matched it to make me want to go from eating to drinking and back again.

A nice wine and for $22, I think it is worth checking out for the next time you need a good bubbly.

Sometimes a wine is just a wine

During the tasting I had of some sparkling wines I was able to taste a Lambrusco. Lambrusco is the name of both a red wine grape and an Italian wine made principally from the grape. The grapes and the wine originate from four zones in Emilia-Romagna and one in Lombardy, principally around the central provinces of Modena, Parma, Reggio nell'Emilia, and Mantua. The grape has a long winemaking history with archaeological evidence indicating that the Etruscans cultivated the vine. In Roman times, the Lambrusco was highly valued for its productivity and high yields with Cato the Elder stating that produce of two thirds of an acre could make enough wine to fill 300 amphoras.

The most highly-rated of its wines are the frothy, frizzante (slightly sparkling) red wines that are designed to be drunk young from one of the five Lambrusco denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) regions: Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro, Lambrusco di Sorbara, Lambrusco Salamino di Santa Croce, Lambrusco Reggiano, and Lambrusco Mantovano. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Lambrusco was the biggest selling import wine in the United States. During that time the wine was also produced in a white and rosé style made by limiting the skin contact with the must. Today, Lambrusco is still one of the most consumed wines in the US, although there is plenty more Merlot and Cabernet than any other wine.

The Lambrusco I tasted was the Cleto Chiari Pruno Nero Lambrusco NV, from the DOC of Grasparossa di Castelvetro. It was slightly sparkling, not the full bubble that one would expect in regular sparkling wines. It was actually closed with a regular cork and foil, with no cage to hold it.

The smell turned me off. It had lots of sticky sweet liquorish, with little else. When I tasted it my face made such a reaction that it stopped other people as they were lifting the glass to their lips. It was extremely astringent. There was a thin prune juice flavor, kind of like a proem that had too little sugar in it.

Not a great experience, but hopefully I’ll try another Lambrusco soon to show me that good wines can be made from this grape.

Bubbles and all its glory

As the New Year has come, the proper way to celebrate the moment between one year and the next is to break open the bubbly.

And so this year I found myself with a bottle of Prosecco. Prosecco is an Italian wine – generally a dry sparkling wine – made from a variety of white grape of the same name. The grape is grown mainly in the Veneto region of Italy, traditionally in an area near Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, in the hills north of Treviso.

Champagne is the traditional sparkle of choice to bring in the new year, or get rid of the lingering memory of the old year. Champagne however has become extremely expensive, and more party hosts have chosen more alternatives such as Cava from Spain, Sekt from Germany, sparkling wine from California or Prosecco from Italy. Many examples of each of these bubblies are very tasty and perfectly good substitutes for any New Year’s Eve party.

Prosecco is made sparkling by the Charmat method, where the second fermentation (the one in which the bubbles are created in the wine) occurs in steel tanks as opposed to the Champagne or traditional method of having the second fermentation occur in the same bottle in which it will be pouring into your glass.

The Prosecco I tasted was from Cinzano. The grapes were from the Colline trevigiane region in the Veneto appellation of Italy. The Cinzano company started in 1757 with two brothers, Giovanni Giacomo and Carolo Stegano Cinzano. They started their business in Turin, creating vermouth. According to their current importer (Palm Bay International), the Savoy monarchs requested of the Cinzano’s that they create a sparkling wine to emulate French Champagne in the early 19th Century. That resulted in the creation of Cinzano Sparkling wines in 1850. Gruppo Campari currently owns Cincano, having purchased the company in 1999.

I opened the bottle on New Year’s Eve with Julie and Leah and it was a beautiful wine! We opened the bottled at 5 minutes to midnight so that we could toast at the appropriate second and I do not think we could have brought in the new year with a better beverage. It had very pleasing small to medium size bubbles and the nose was a tantalizing pear and yellow apple. The taste was light and crisp in the mouth, just begging for another taste and another and another.

Full disclosure, I received this wine as a sample.