For those of you who’ve resolved to continue drinking bubbly beyond New Year’s, my tasting group has five special Champagnes we’d recommend. No need to print out our list and use it as a buying guide; as the Ladies Tasting Society blind-tasted our way through these wines, we were struck by how consistently delicious they were, indicating to us that as a category, if you’re in the market these days for a good bottle of real French champers, you can be confident that you’ll score something satisfying. Also, with our average bottle costing around $40–even though we’d set ourselves a $75 limit–we’d definitely bust out with something we’re not used to saying: that, considering this level of quality, today’s Champagne can present a real value.

Perhaps, we theorized, this may be because of the rise of the so-called “grower’s Champagne,” a new type of bubbly coming from a band of intrepid farmers in Champagne who used to sell all their grapes to the big producers like Moet or Tattinger, but have since begun to bottle their own. Grower’s Champagnes are well-represented on our list. They tend to be unique wines, especially expressive of the small plots of land they hail from, and fairly well-priced since they have to compete with the big boys. (Interestingly, a Veuve Clicquot yellow label retails for about $40 these days, the same as our per-bottle average, and four bucks more than the ladies’ fave, Voirin-Jumel’s Blanc de Blancs.)

Click here for our list, in order of our preference:

Best of Tasting
Voisin-Jumel Blanc de Blancs $35.99
A quintessential grower’s Champagne (the Voirin-Jumels insist they are a “family, not a brand”), this bubbly won the most fans with its slightly golden color, yeasty-bready nose, vigorous bubbles, and super-clean flavors of fruit laced with notes of vanilla and caramel. Everything just seemed so harmonious and complete. ***1/2

Best Value
Michel Dervin Brut $30
This was my favorite. My notes: “Very pale. Big fruit nose! Not as rich as the Voirin-Jumel, but minerally, apple, pineapple.” I may have been biased, since I recognized it as the house Champagne I’d flipped over a few nights earlier at the hot new vegetarian outpost in Napa, Obuntu. Said one lady: “fun and young!” **1/2

Tarlant Brut Reserve $34.99
Another Champagne with a beautifully pale color, but a big bouquet of apples, white flowers, and (as one lady noted) “ouzo.” Stoney flavors, fresh, with green apples. Many of us guessed wrongly that this was a blanc de blancs, that is, made of 100% white grapes, but it’s a blend of equal parts of the three official Champagne grapes: chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier. ***

Tarlant Cuvée Louis $54.99
We all loved this wine, but perhaps not with same passion as the Voirin-Jumel. It’s a tad more golden than its little sibling, the Brut Reserve, and we suspected–in part because the Scotch-like aromas that one lady detected–a bit more alcoholic. Creamy, with loads of fresh baked bread flavors, some caramel. Some of us thought mistakenly that this Tarlant was a older, vintage champagne. ***

Pierre Peters Blanc de Blancs Cuvée de Reserve $49
The Pierre Peters turned out to be the evening’s most controversial. It boasted the deepest golden color of the lot, and a nose that we all agreed was “big and sophisticated.” But it was light on the palate and had a shortish finish that, as one lady put it, “died for me.” Gentle bubbles and a slight flavor of pine needles clinched our love-hate relationship. **1/2