With the exception of an occasional mimosa — and only when the sparkler destined for adulteration isn’t one of my favorites — I’ve never been much of a wine-cocktail drinker. Oh, and then there’s the sangría we serve every year at our Fourth of July pool party (again, made with zinfandel of a quality that wouldn’t highly recommend itself for savoring alone).
 
That’s because wine, to me, already represents a finished work of art. In my opinion, the ultimate mixologist is the winemaker: she worked hard to source the best ingredients, blend at the perfect levels, and serve in a pretty package. Why would I want to muck up her creation by throwing soda pop at it?
 
But I surprised myself last night not only by serving “Late Harvest Wine and Campari Cocktails” before a dinner party, but by improving the recipe with a stealth ingredient. For my recipe, click here:
 
The surprise deviation from the recipe was a bottle of Moscato d’Asti I had in the fridge. This off-dry, slightly effervescent sweetheart of a deal (the Tintero “Sori Gramella” cost me $9) had all the residual sugar needed to replace the late harvest riesling called for by the recipe. Plus, its fizz made this refreshing drink even more thirst quenching.
 
3-1/2 cups Moscato d’Asti
2-1/2 cups OJ
1 cup Campari
 
Mix, chill, and serve over ice in a tall glass. Cheers!

I learned this Easter that, when it comes to pairing with honey-baked ham, there is only one wine better than gewürztraminer — and perhaps only one that is more obscure and challenging. (“Oh, I don’t like gewürz-whatever,” I always hear, “too sweet.” Just you wait…)
 
I learned my lesson thanks to the beauty of the leftover. You see, at Easter dinner proper, my family polished off a “yummy” (in my father-in-law’s words) bottle of Gundlach Bundschu’s 2007 “Rhinefarm Vineyard” gewürztraminer. It was utterly dry, perfectly balanced, and medium-bodied; but its tastes were so life-sized it came off big and candied. Flowery, nutty aromas greeted us, and were followed by complex flavors of apple, pear, lychee, and a little lime on the fresh finish. It went just perfectly with our ham, which I served with a spiced pear relish.
 
Guess what, though? The GunBun gewürz got blown off the table by a wine I’d never even heard of before that I drank with leftovers the next day for lunch. For the mystery contender, click here:
 
The wine is a Clairette de Die, an off-dry sparkling muscat from the Rhone region in France. Normally I would never have thought to buy it. But I was shopping around for a blind tasting dedicated to sparkling wines other than Champagne, and it looked like a good mind-opener. I had to miss the tasting, so there it was in my fridge, and one thing led to another until I was guzzling that Clairette de Die (this one a nonvintage from Jean-Claude Raspail, $27) for lunch, aperitifs, dinner, and dessert until, alas, not a dribble remained.
 
I found myself loving the fact that (unlike the Gundlach Bundschu gewurz) the Raspail was slightly sweet. It wasn’t cloying, and the honeyed flavors were balanced perfectly with big, crisp apple and pear notes. And the bubbles gave the wine that cleansing, fresh feeling that a wine needs to pair well with food. The lesson: don’t be afraid of the revenge of the sweet; it’s satisfying for everyone involved.

By Emmanuel Bridonneau, guest writer and founder of Vins Voyages

I recently took the step to only have Crémant de Loire available at all times in my fridge. It’s an extraordinary alternative to Champagne for three reasons that I see:

1. It is made the same way as Champagne (méthode traditionnelle) but with the local varietals (chenin blanc, chardonnay, and cabernet franc)
2. Major Champagne brands make it too
3. It is roughly half the price of Champagne

Granted, it doesn’t have the same spiciness or volume of real Champagne, but it really conveys the “terroir,” that is, the specificity of the location it comes from, in this case the Loire river valley in France.

My take? Keep the fine Champagne for special occasions and have Crémant for the other opportunities. No room for in between.

Santé et meilleurs voeux!

Dear Wine Girl:
I am not a big Champagne fan but your post did get the tastebuds tingling. Can’t wait to try the new Champagne if it ever makes its way over to the UK.
Glasgow Sally

Thanks for visiting Wine Girl, all the way from Glasgow.
I have never before met a British person, even via email, who said she is not a big Champagne fan! Originally in fact it was the British craze over this strange, fizzy wine from France that made the Champagne market. The wonderful English wine critic Hugh Johnson talks about grower-champagnes a bit (not highly, interestingly enough, but this was a while ago) in “A Life Uncorked” and I’m sure there are plenty representatives of the category in the UK, even in your Scottish neck of the woods. Here’s a tip: look for RM or SR on the label. That stands for “Recoltant-Manipulant” or “Societé de Recoltants,” which means the wine was farmed and bottled by the same guy or gal (rather than purchased as grapes by a big producer).
Click here for a very informative story about grower champagnes (which I was delighted to find are sometimes dismissed by their critics as “farmer fizz”).
Cheers,
Heather

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

Normally the words “emerging wine region” should merit a wine lover’s attention. With demand (and prices) rising for well-known labels, emerging wine regions are often the source of easy-to-find, easy-on-your-wallet palate pleasers. Such is the case, for example, with South Africa or Languedoc-Roussillon in the south of France.

Unfortunately, the term can also refer to an area that is, on the whole, still struggling to get around some of the climate and soil issues that prevented it from being a prestige wine region in the first place. Such is the case, I’d argue after a recent visit, to the Sierra Foothills in California.

Also known as Gold Country because of the famous gold strike near Sutter’s Mill in 1848, the region lies mostly in Amador and Calaveras counties, about halfway between Sacramento and Yosemite. Many wild-wild-West remnants of the great rush remain, but these days in the Sierra Foothills it’s safe to say that red, white, and rosé is the new gold.

Not in the 14-karat sense, though. For my terrifying encounter with a junk-yard dog of a chard, click here:

The low note of our wine explorations was sounded, unfortunately, at a tasting bar near our bed and breakfast in Sutter Creek. When I walked in, a handful of visitors were involved in a heated argument over their favorite sample: was it the peach, raspberry, or pineapple sparkler they liked best? No, wait, it was the almond! Alarmed, I steered right over the sweet bubblies and landed on a 2003 chardonnay from Le Mulet Rouge ($18/bottle), which sports a mule on the label. (The winery’s take on the cute animal trend? Perhaps. In any case, it was my first taste of the area’s tendency toward homey humor.) “Junk heap,” my notes begin. “Smells like garbage, tastes like soap and rotten nuts.”

I should have run from this dog right then. But I got distracted by a decent 2006 viognier from Crystal Basin Cellars ($20), which had loads of pear and apricot on the nose, followed by some tropical fruits and a nice tangerine zing. But before long I was assaulted again, this time by Gold Hill’s Red Wine 2005 ($29/bottle!), which despite its cab-merlot pedigree came off as “a little thin, some good aromas of berries, but boring on the palate.” Off flavors, including one zinfandel’s “tinny” aftertaste, came up again and again. Overall, the wines from Crystal Basin fared best, with the exception of their 2006 malbec ($25), which the list described as having a “Houdini finish.” Thinking this must mean the wine had a complicated or surprising aftertaste, I asked for a sip. “No,” the bartender corrected me. “It means ‘disappearing.’” And he was right. But I’m still stumped as to why anyone would think this would be a positive attribute to a wine, worthy of advertising.

Later, at a fun dinner at the Imperial Hotel (a former whorehouse that’s now a legitimate hotel with an ambitious restaurant), we had a 2004 merlot from Stevenot. Its thin profile and short finish convinced us that wineries in the Sierra Foothills are still struggling with a shortish growing season, high temperatures, and soils that may not lend themselves to the most familiar and marketable varieties, like merlot.

Thankfully, we did taste some wine that I found recommendable. Stay tuned for a redeeming trip to Cedarville Vineyard and my first, long-awaited taste of a zin made from centenarian vines.

Just in time for tax season, here’s a list of my ten favorite wines that cost less than, well, a lot of stuff, including a bouquet of flowers, three trips across the Golden Gate Bridge — even Madonna’s new CD. To make it easier to find the wines, I’ve listed the four reds, one rosé, and five whites by type, and then supplied a particular example from a producer I’ve grown to love. So if, say, you’re inspired to cop a highly-recommended cheap thrill off a pinot bianco from Italy, but can’t find my favorite from Terre di Gioia, trust me. Pretty much any pinot bianco in this price range will do the trick. For less than $3 per glass on the average, these wines will also take the edge off that check you’re writing April 15 to the military industrial complex.

For this year’s list of top ten wines less than $15, click here:

Grenache from Spain
(Borsao “Tres Picos” Garnacha, Campo de Borja, $13)
When it’s picked right and comes from older vines, grenache (“garnacha” in Spanish) can make a rich, round wine with loads of sweet cherry flavors. Examples coming out of obscure pueblos like Borja can be amazingly low priced.

Petite Sirah from California
(Bogle Petite Sirah $11)
Remember Gallo’s “Hearty Burgundy”? It’s no surprise this satisfying jug wine had nothing to do with real Burgundy. But did you know that a key ingredient was petite sirah? Bogle’s bottling is as ubiquitous as it is tasty.

Sangiovese Blend from Italy
(Falesco “Vitiano” Umbria $10)
Forget Chianti. Look outside this famous region for innovative, well-priced riffs on its main grape sangiovese. Falesco’s is fleshed out with merlot and cab but still packs a spicy, food-friendly punch.

Red Table Wine from Portugal
(Symington “Altano” Duoro $7)
Drink up these big, dry, earthy bargains before the rest of the world catches on. Altano, a blend of tinta roriz and touriga franca from the great Port producer Symington, is a little tannic but a whole lotta fruit-forward too.

Dry Rosé from France
(Domaine de l’Hortus “Bergerie l’Hortus” Pic St. Loup, Rosé Saignée $12)
Perfect for a hot summer afternoon when you just can’t stomach a red, real rosé has made a comeback recently. L’Hortus’s is delicious proof that pink can mean crisp, refreshing, and a tad interesting — not sweet, cloying, and simple.

Fume Blanc from California
(Chateau St. Jean Fume Blanc $13)
“Fume Blanc” is what Robert Mondavi renamed sauvignon blanc to make it more marketable. He also aged some of it in oak to give it a touch of creaminess. Chateau St. Jean’s is one of the best — and cheapest — examples of the style.

Pinot Bianco from Italy
(Terre di Gioia Pinot Bianco $11)
When they hear “white wine from Italy,” most people think pinot grigio, not pinot bianco. But the latter has been like a lifeboat thrown into the mediocre ocean of the former. The name of the winery Terre di Gioia is easy to remember: just think “joy.”

Vouvray from France
(Champalou Vouvray Sec $14)
Vouvray comes from the Loire River valley and is made from the wondrously versatile grape chenin blanc. So it can come dry, sweet, still, sparkling, and everywhere in between. Whichever, it’s appley, minerally, honeyed, and great as an apéritif.

Sparkling Wine from Spain
(Jaume Serra “Cristalino” Cava Brut $8)
Many bubbly fans don’t realize that Spain makes an amusing sparkler called Cava. It’s not got any of the steeliness or complexity of Champagne. And xarel’lo, one of the grapes it’s made of, is no chardonnay. But at less than a ten-spot, Cristalino’s got some dough (and some tangerine, grapefruit, and toast flavors, too).

Gewurztraminer from Anywhere
(Navarro Gewurztraminer “Cuvee Traditional” Mendocino $14)
Poor gewurztraminer. It’s the most overlooked varietal in the wine world. But lucky us; we can get damned good gewurz for very few greenbacks. Navarro’s makes theirs in a dry style, but with all the floral and spice notes you need.

Because it’s one of San Francisco’s greatest restaurants with a wine list full of trophies, we made reservations at Michael Mina to celebrate a big promotion. Five hours and more than four bottles of fine wine later, the four of us were feeling fully lubricated and nearly insolvent.

My notes for your vicarious pleasure:

Jacques Selosse “Cuvée Initiale” Blanc de Blancs, Avise, Nonvintage
Selosse is among the first and most controversial of the “grower-producers” in Champagne, that is, grape-growers who used to sell all their fruit to the big houses like Veuve and Moet, but now make bubbly on their own premises. Considered freakish-tasting by some because of their bold structure and forward fruit and mineral flavors (not graceful, like Champagne “should” be) our micro-Champers had a big, crisp frame and was loaded with Gala apple, tangerine, lemon, limestone, and granite notes.

De Montille Puligny Montrachet “Caillerets” Premier Cru 2002
A favorite of the evening! Hubert de Montille has a light touch when it comes to oaking his white Burgundy, so the emphasis here is on chardonnay fruit. Ours showed a rich and focused core of apple and pear flavors, with some baking-spice notes on the edges. A delicious, long, pure finish. Turns out that the Caillerets vineyard was once an extension of the grand cru plot Le Montrachet, so these grapes have serious pedigree.

Coup de Foudre Cabernet Sauvignon Napa 2004
A coup de foudre in French is literally a strike of lightning, but can also mean a revelation or even love at first sight – and indeed this cabernet left us smitten. A bodacious nose of sweet berry compote and fruitcake spices was followed by a decadent concoction featuring ripe blackberry, blueberry, nutmeg, and chocolate notes. This cabernet exemplified great Napa cab at its fruit-bomb best.

Ducru-Beaucaillou Saint Julien 1985
The closure came out of this Bordeaux soaked and musty, and two of us felt that the wine was corked to the point of ruination. (The sommelier disagreed, but brought us two glasses on the house of an Alexander Valley cab from Lancaster Vineyards as compensation). “All the more Ducru-Beaucaillou for me!” I exclaimed, loving the old Saint Julien’s blend’s relaxed, soft texture and its complex mix of earthy, mushroomy, minty, and green pepper notes, laced over some surprisingly fresh fruit flavors. I agree it was a little corky, though, and we all noted how different this sample tasted than the brawny 1995 that the same friends brought a couple of years ago to dinner at Fleur de Lys.

Kracher Cuvée Ba, Illmitz, Austria 2006
Disznókó Tokaji 4 Puttonyos, Hungary 2001
Two of us enjoyed these stickies with their dessert. My palate was so tired by the end of this 5-hour gastronomic extravaganza, all I remember is that I liked the Austrian Muscat better because it was bigger and sweeter. It was probably all I could taste anymore!

I’m a little late on the uptake, but I’ve discovered the most delicious California sparkler. It’s so good, so versatile, and so well-priced ($15.99 at Trader Joe’s), it’s toppled my previous house bubbly, Gloria Ferrer’s Brut, right off my top shelf in fridge.

Why? Because Schramsberg’s new brut sparkling wine, a nonvintage blend called Mirabelle, has the biggest, most vivid fruit flavors I have tasted over many a Christmas Past. For me, the fruit was unmistakeably tropical, so much so that I took a sip and blurted out: “Pineapple! Mango! Coconut … like a piña colada mated with a Champagne!”

Consistent with Schramsberg’s style, though, the Mirabelle also has some Frenchified affects, like a distinctly dry, ever so slightly tart finish — plus a great yeasty aroma and a tiny bit of cream mid-palate.

Schramsberg is one of California’s first sparkling wine producers; Tricky Dick made it famous when he brought it to Beijing as a gift to the Chinese, a move perhaps more revolutionary than Nixon’s going to China in the first place, since the strictly standard diplomatic ice breaker at the time was French Champagne. Since Chinese laborers hand-dug Schramsberg’s cellars in the nineteenth century — now there’s a enological full circle! — the winery has been aiming for a bubbly the power of a California wine, balanced with the finesse of a vintage French Champagne.

Fait accompli!

This week, the first official week of summer, has also been a week of sparkling rosé discoveries. First there was the Bugey-Cerdon, the off-dry, pink bubbly from the Savoie in France. Then, another pink came out of the blue the other night. The sommelier recommended it with this pistachio, mascarpone, and cherry sorbet construction I ordered, and not thinking it was going to be fizzy and not white I said, sure. Then out it came: a little glass of dark carmine wine called Brachetto d’Acqui, with bubbles somewhere between the full liveliness of a champers and the slight frothiness of a frizzante. Unlike the Bugey-Cerdon, the Brachetto fully embraced its sweetness, and its residual sugars, along with its fresh cherry and raspberry flavors, made it a perfect match with my dessert. (At only 5.5% alcohol, it didn’t make me sleepy during the opera afterward, either.) It turns out to come from Piedmont in Italy; the winemaker is Giacomo Bologna, and this particular bottling called “Braida” from the 2005 vintage retails for about $23.

But a dry, full-bodied, red, served cold — with bubbles? For my reaction to this unusual suspect, click here:

This bottle I bought on the insistence of my favorite local wine merchant and I have to admit it sat for a couple of months before I dared open it. I mean, it’s not every day you say, “You know what? I think I’ll have an Italian red with some bubbles.” But sparklers-on-the-red-spectrum seems to be the theme this week, and I came home from Iphigénie en Tauride hot and thirsty, so took the plunge. Now this wine, an Oltrepò Pavese “Viti di Luna” 2005 from the Cantine Francesco Montagna in Lombardy in Italy ($14), was a definite departure from the pink sweeties I’d been exposed to lately. Made from bonarda, a native variety very similar to Dolcetto, the Oltrepò Pavese was a dark red wine, dry and tannic, but with the added fun and refreshment of bubbles and a chill. I am not ashamed to admit that I fully enjoyed it with a plate of really garlicky sundried tomato pesto.