No need to overspend for your next celebration. Spain, Italy, and even the U.S. now produce sparkling wines that are just as good as — and a lot cheaper than — fine French champagne.
By Daniel Duane
Crisis, they say, equals danger plus opportunity. And if this perilous holiday season doesn’t see Lehman execs bathing naked in $4,000-per-bottle Clos d’Ambonnay champagne, it offers an opportunity to explore the other 92 percent of the sparkling wine market. Champagne, from the Champagne region of France, amounts to only 8 percent of all bubbly, creating an awfully expensive merger of status and scarcity. But the champagne process ain’t exactly top secret, and winemakers all over are now using it to wonderful effect — meaning it’s time to embrace alternative sparklers as a category all its own, remarkably delicious and surprisingly cheap.
At the extreme value end, Spanish cava is a light-bodied, neutral-flavored, effervescent white that often goes for less than $10 a bottle. Italy’s white prosecco, only a bit more expensive, is a fine-bubbled blend of citrusy brightness — a perfect party-starter. Italian Lambrusco, an affordable sparkling red, goes so great with salami you’ll wonder why Mom never packed a bottle in your lunch box, and it’s positively shameful so few know about brachetto d’acqui, a slightly sweet light-red Italian aperitif with such a low alcohol level (7 percent) you can down it by the pint.
Even American sparklers have improved markedly; safe bets include Oregon’s Argyle Winery Brut and New Mexico’s Gruet Winery Rosé. A big-bodied Australian sparkling shiraz is a great way to get a crowd laughing. And even in France there’s a whole category of nonchampagne sparklers called crémants (crémant d’Alsace, crémant de Loire), which at about $15 to $50 per bottle won’t break the bank (at least those that aren’t already broken), let alone cost the U.S. Treasury $700 billion.
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