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When I was much younger, I was part of a wine-tasting group in San Francisco that would gather just before Christmas each year and taste the world's greatest sparkling wines, mostly Champagnes. Oh, and we invited the best chefs in the city to provide special dishes suitable to the occasion. It was a truly glorious event, and it provided a remarkable base of knowledge from which to judge sparkling wines in the future. So, for most of my life I have considered the great sparkling wines of the world to be a necessity, not a luxury. I tell you this because my assignment on your behalf was a horse of a different color: find the gems among the world's least expensive sparkling wines. Ah, the sacrifices we make!Sparkling wine has bubbles. Sometimes they sparkle. The bubbles are from carbon dioxide that is trapped in the wine, a product of the conversion of sugar into alcohol by adding yeast in a secondary fermentation. The complexity of this process, the heavy bottles and corks required to keep the wine from exploding and the fact that expensive grapes are used (Chardonnay and Pinot Noir most often) all combine to make these wines expensive to produce. The quality of the wine depends on the quality of the grapes, the weather in which they were grown and the artistry with which it was made. Price is a function of all those things, plus, of course, the snob appeal of the brand. Thus we pay around $150 for a bottle of Dom Pérignon because it is superb wine with a treasured name. The fact that sparkling wines are almost a requirement for special occasions like boat christenings and weddings also reduces price sensitivity and leads to higher prices. So it is that great $15 sparkling wines are hard to find, but good to find. I do have to say, however, that not many will rival the sheer joy of Dom Pérignon.
The tasting was interesting. The first day I tried about 15 wines, using a bottle of Pol Roger Extra Cuvée de Reserve Brut as a benchmark. This is a superb mid-priced ($40) Champagne that I have drunk over the years. Pol Roger was said to be the favorite wine marque of Winston Churchill, although I could never understand how he could taste the wine with those cigars in his mouth. Anyway, the first part of the tasting was easy; get rid of the junk, or perhaps we should say junque when writing about such a lofty subject. It is hard to make really good sparkling wine for less than $15, and you should be careful because a lot of this stuff will give you an instant headache. About half the wines were nasty and could be dispensed with quickly. The second half of the wines had aspiration, meaning someone tried to make good wine, but most were flawed in some significant way. The same process was repeated a second and third day with similar results. Fortunately a gem or two emerged each time. Hallelujah! There really are some nice sparkling wines for less than $15. The hardest part was rationalizing the wide range of styles; trying to project how you might use the wines over the holidays. So let's talk about that.
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