We love sparkling wines…
Why is sparkling wine so awesome? Well it pairs with just about any food, it’s a good palate cleanser, it’s delicious and it’s fun of course (it always puts me in a good mood).
One of our favorite food and wine pairings – salted kettle chips and Champagne. Yum!
Even though we advocate drinking sparkling wines more than just at celebratory functions, with the holidays here, celebrations are a great excuse if you need yet another reason to enjoy sparkling wine! So this week we’re going to do short overviews of the most popular types of sparkling wines (white wines only, we’ll save the reds for another time). We’ve covered some of these wines in the past so there might be some review and we’ll link to those episodes if you want to listen to dig deeper.
In this week’s episode we briefly discuss:
- Champagne
- Crémant
- Cava – check out our episode on Cava
- Moscato d’Asti – check out our episode on Moscato
- Prosecco – check out our episode on Prosecco
- American sparkling wines
- During our Four Wines episode we recommend a really awesome sparkling wine from Washington
- We mentioned both Gruet and Schramsberg are fine examples of American sparkling wines
Wine Recommendation:
- 100% Moscato Bianco
- Alcohol content: 6% vol
- Aromas of stone fruit with flavors of apple, honey, stone fruit and nice minerality.
- Just right amount of sweetness
- Great with spicy food, some holiday desserts, or a really strong cheese
- Priced around $10
Pascal Arnoux Crémant de Bourgogne Blanc de Blancs NV
- Made of Chardonnay grapes, from Burgundy, France
- Brut aka dry
- Aromas of cheese rind and toast, minerals, pear, apples and apricot
- Taste like citrus, green apple and apricot with a creamy texture
- Great with potato chips, cheesy food
- Priced around $25
Bonus Wine!!! Ruffino Sparkling Rose
- made primarily from the Glera grape, which is used in all Prosecco wines, blended with Pinot Noir
- Flavors of red berries and stonefruit
- Extra-dry (means mostly dry with a touch of sweetness)
- Pair with grilled fish, roasted chicken, and mixed greens salads. It was awesome with Thanksgiving dinner!!!
- Priced around $10
Sources:
Websites: Wine Folly, Wikipedia
The Wine for Normal People podcast was nominated for a taste award! So please head over to Wine for Normal People and click the button to vote. This is time sensitive, the voting only goes for 6 days after this episode will be released so if you’re listening to this before Dec. 20, 2016 please vote!