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TwitThisRemarkably Flexible Wines
The most obvious use is to toast the New Year; who doesn't like to pop a cork at the stroke of midnight and sip some fizzy wine to celebrate? It's the next best thing to kissing your honey. But these are also great cocktail wines, either alone or mixed with fruit juice or liqueurs to make holiday parties even more festive. And they can be wonderful dinner wines, surprisingly food friendly with dishes from caviar to glazed ham or roast pork to pasta. And, of course, you will want to serve them if you are launching any boats over the holidays.These are remarkably flexible wines and the range of styles below can accommodate almost any occasion or palate. You will note there are no "Champagnes" on the list. That term can be used only with sparkling wines from the Champagne region of France, and I didn't find any of those under $15, sad to say. There aren't any California wines on the list. I didn't find many under $15, and the few that are in that range just didn't make the cut. There aren't any Proseccos, the lightly sparkling wine from Italy so popular these days; couldn't find a good one. But there are a couple of wines that could cost me my wine-tasting merit badge, most notably one in a funny bottle with the name "Yellow," from Yellowglen Vineyards in Australia. I happened to taste that day with a daughter who will soon be married. She was on the lookout for wedding wines. When we opened the bottle of Yellow, she laughed that it could be the best wine in the world but she could never serve it because it looked so "cheesy." To put a good face on it, the Yellow bottle stands out for its modernity in the staid old world of sparkling wine packaging. Imagine our surprise when it and a companion wine named "Pink" turned out to be two of the best wines in the tasting. ("Pink" barely missed the list.) We came back to it again and again to verify its superiority to other wines we tasted. She liked it, and the fact that it cost less than $10, so much that she told her mother she would serve it at her wedding if we could crochet little "cozies" to cover the bottles.
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