Fizz for sparkling Christmas parties

Your guide to the best wines for the festive season begins here.

If you’re planning on a Christmas drinks party, then bubbles have to be part of the picture. Here are some of my sure fire hits that won’t have your guests looking for the nearest pot plant to empty their drinks into – but which won’t be overly demanding on the pocket either.

I’ve also included some more expensive recommendations that might be a stretch for a party budget, but that I would certainly be happy to sip or to serve on any occasion over Christmas.

Sparkling Chardonnay Crémant du Jura - £7.49, Aldi

This has to be one of the best sparkling wine bargains around – and the fact that is has been included by the Association of Wine Educators as one of their 100 AWEsome Wines 2016 (see http://www.wineeducators.com/100-awesome-wines/ for the full downloadable list) tells you that it punches well above its weight. Light, fresh, fine sparkling wine made in the same way as Champagne from the little-known Jura region in eastern France.

Franciacorta Brut - £8.99, Lidl

This is part of Lidl’s Christmas collection, one of their “when it’s gone it’s gone” selections. It has lovely creamy mousse and appley fruit, a touch riper than Champagne, coming as it does from northern Italy.

Calvet Crémant de Bordeaux Brut Rosé - £11.99, Ocado

Pink bubbles certainly help to make everything more festive and this bottle, made from Cabernet Franc, has a lovely creamy mousse and a refreshing leafy edge to the fruit.

Montes Sparking Angel Brut NV - £15.50, Oddbins

This is a blend of two of the traditional Chamapagne varieties, Pinor Noir and Chardonnay, and is made in the same way as Champagne. But the warmer Chilean climate makes for riper fruit flavours, along with toasty, nutty almond and even a hint of marmalade.

Definition Blanc de Blancs Champagne NV - £19.99 (mix six price), Majestic

I love the pure Chardonnay fruit, mineral finish, and the classic Blanc de Blancs profile of this Majestic own label Champagne. But I really don’t care for the actual label, so this is perhaps best kept in the ice bucket when not being poured.

Greyfriars Rosé Reserve 2013 - £21 from greyfriarsvineyard.co.uk

Keep it local with this award winning traditional method English fizz, made from vines grown on the Hog’s Back south of Guildford. Finely structured with poise and precision.

Furleigh Estate Dorset Coast Special Reserve NV - £22.50, Waitrose

Another English sparkler, this time from Dorset. Aromas of shortbread, peaches and cream lead onto a lively, fruity palate.

Waitrose Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut NV - £22.99, Waitrose

Good depth of flavour, nice linearity and an underlying minerality mean that this Champagne tastes much more expensive than it is.

Champagne Oudinot Brut 2008 - £30, M&S

Like all its wines, this Champagne is exclusive to M&S and delivers rich, savoury, egg-custard and baked apple fruit. The full flavours make this one for the table rather than an aperitif.

Champagne Le Mesnil Blanc de Blancs 2007 Grand Cru - £33.99, Waitrose

Really lovely stuff, with pretty fruit, length and elegance, along with those bready, yeasty flavours that denote lengthy ageing on the lees.

Christmas is coming...

So you’ve ordered the turkey and can look forward to queuing patiently in the cold to pick it up at the butcher’s this weekend. 

What?  You haven’t ordered one?  Man, are you in trouble.  If you’re reading this over breakfast you’d better chuck your coat on over your pyjamas, high tail it to your local supermarket and trample the old and infirm underfoot as you fight your way to the freezer section in the hope of wrenching the last frozen turkey in the county from the hands of a little old lady.

And if you’re unsuccessful, then it’s going to be a question of brazening it out with “Oh we thought we’d give turkey a miss this year and try something new.  We’re having festive shepherd’s pie instead – so much less work for the cook, too.”

I well remember the year my parents opted to have roast beef instead of a bird for Christmas dinner.  What, no stuffing?  The memories are still painful.

But you’ve laid in all the wines, right?  No?  Okaaay….then you’d better spend the next few minutes casting your eye over this column, then just tear it out and take it with you on your supermarket sweep.

Ordering deadlines for online deliveries are past, so you are going to be either fighting it out with the crowds in the supermarket aisles, or you could enjoy a more civilised experience at your local independent wine merchant.

To assist you, here’s the shopping list:

• Fizz
• Cheap and cheerful crowd-pleasing wines – red and white
• Wines for turkey (or indeed shepherd’s pie) – red and white
• Versatile wines for “cold meat and pickles”, family games or Doctor Who watching

I’m recommending particular wines but, as time is tight, feel free to take them as inspiration rather than gospel (if that isn’t too blasphemous).

Fizz

Champagne Jacquart – on offer at Majestic for £18 a bottle

This is an easy-drinking Champagne, made by no-nonsense and gifted winemaker Floriane Ezniack for one of the region’s co-operatives.  A blend of the 3 Champagne varieties, Pinots Noir and Meunier plus Chardonnay, this has plenty of lively, appley-marzipan fruit, as well as a Silver medal from this year’s Decanter World Wine Awards.

Crowd pleasers

Waitrose’s El Guia wines – white, rosé and red, £3.99 a bottle

This could be your “two birds with one stone” wine.  Cheap and cheerful (and believe me, there are plenty of cheep and woeful ones out there), Spanish wines with excellent gluggability.  Keep these on hand for any festive parties, or just to offer drop-in guests.

Sainsbury’s House Côtes du Rhône - £3.99

When I’m pushed for time and faced with the wall of wine in a supermarket, I home in on the Rhône for reliable and good value reds.  This one is at the simple end of the spectrum (don’t go expecting Châteauneuf complexity at this price), but is well made and has some depth of flavour.

Sainsbury’s Vinho Verde - £3.98

Featherlight, gently perfumed, zippy and zesty and off-dry.  A perfect Christmas pick-me-up for jaded imbibers – and at just 9% alcohol it’s practically a health tonic.

Wines for turkey

This is rather misleading, as I am not talking about matching wine to the turkey itself, which is what could be politely described as delicately flavoured.  Rather I’m thinking about matching a wine to the occasion and to stand up to all the flavours that we pile on to our Christmas dinner plates.

Martinborough Vineyard “Te Tera” Pinot Noir 2011 - £17.49 but currently £13.99 when you buy 2 bottles at Majestic

My favoured tipple for the festive bird is a Pinot Noir.  If you have a treasured mature bottle of red Burgundy, then by all means uncork that, but older wines do carry with them the threat of spoilage – so always have something else as a back-up.

I love the pure, expressive fruit of New Zealand Pinots, and those from Martinborough, at the southern tip of the North Island, combine ripeness with depth and structure in a most food-friendly way.

It’s always a good idea to have both white and red on offer for Christmas dinner, to please all tastes.  Chablis often makes an appearance at Christmas, but its lean minerality makes for too weedy a wine for the occasion.  Ditto most Sancerre and Pouilly Fumé. 

Domaine Bégude Terroir Chardonnay 2001 - £8.99 from Waitrose

From the surprisingly cool area of Limoux, north of Corbières, comes this great value classy Chardonnay.  Some of it was fermented in barrel, giving it texture and a subtle gunflint character.

Versatile wines

These are easy-going and adaptable wines that can do more than one thing: pep up a meal of essentially leftovers, accompany a family game of Monotony (sorry Monopoly), or soothe you as you relax on the sofa in front of the telly.

Domaine Zind Humbrecht Gewurztraminer 2011 - £14.99, down to £11.99 when you buy 2 at Majestic

I’d never be without a bottle of Alsace white in the house at Christmas (or any time of year, come to think of it).  If you’ve never experienced the Turkish Delight and pink peppercorn charms of Gewurz before, then let this rich but dry version from Olivier Humbrecht, Master of Wine and PhD, seduce you.

Chénas 2011, Jean-François Trichard - £10.99, down to £8.99 when you buy 2 at Majestic

Beaujolais is such a wonderfully accommodating style of wine – drink on its own or down it with a plate of cold food.  The ripe, perfumed and tangy raspberry/cranberry fruit makes for a juicy palate cleanser.

You could also serve up Pinot Noir here – or indeed have the Beaujolais with Christmas dinner.

I covered sweet wines (and other sweet drinks) last time, so have a look on my blog if you’d like to remind yourself of my sage words on the subject:  http://yourliquidassets.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/dew-drops-on-roses-and-whiskers-on.html

But for supermarket shoppers in a hurry looking for something to go with Christmas pudding, keep your eyes peeled for Moscatel de Valencia.  At around £4 a bottle, its sweet orange peel flavours are a billy bargain match.

The other French fizz

“Champagne, in victory I deserve it.  In defeat, I need it.”  This quote, attributed to Napoleon, says a lot about Champagne.  It is an emblematic, almost talismanic, substance which transcends mere wine.  When marking an important event, nothing fits the bill like Champagne. 

You can test this out by popping the cork on a bottle of Champagne and just wait for someone to ask “What’s the special occasion?”  Don’t try this when on your own, obviously.

Sometimes though, we might just fancy a bottle of fizz, without the extra baggage (and hefty price tag) of Champagne.  British drinkers have taken Italian Prosecco to their hearts in recent years.  Very different in style from Champagne, it’s all about fresh fruit, lightness and frothiness, allied to a little sweetness.  I’m all for a glass of it at the start of the evening, but one is usually plenty.

If you are craving the more restrained and dry style of Champagne, then the other French fizz – Crémant – could be for you.

And what is Crémant?  Very simply, it is sparkling wine made in the same way as Champagne, but from outside the Champagne area.

French wine law is based on the principle of guaranteeing the origin of what you are drinking – that the wine in the bottle is from the area designated on the label.  Champagne, for drinkers, may just be shorthand for any sparkling wine.  However, in legal terms, in order for Champagne to appear on the label, the contents must be sparkling wine from the Champagne region around Reims in northern France.

It also has to conform to a certain method of production – more of that in a moment.  So, if you are a winemaker in any other part of France, and wish to make a sparkling wine in the same way as Champagne, your product can be called Crémant.

How is wine made to sparkle?  In its simplest form, carbon dioxide can be forced into any still wine, resulting in a fizzy one.  Anyone with a SodaStream will be familiar with the process – and if you do have one, why not do a little experiment with any cheap bottle of wine and see the result?  I’m confident that a bottle of Gallo White Zinfandel could be immeasurably improved in this way.

The other, more classy way, to make a sparkling wine is to provoke a second fermentation in a still wine.  This is done by adding yeast, and sugar for it to feed on, to the wine.  Alcoholic fermentation produces carbon dioxide and, if not allowed to escape into the atmosphere, will become dissolved in the wine.  This second fermentation can take place either in the bottle, which is the only way permitted for Champagne, Crémant or anything labelled “traditional method” sparkling wine.  Or it can be carried out in a sealed tank, which is used for Prosecco and many other good quality sparkling wines around the world.

Sediment in the bottle

"pupitre" with hand-riddled bottles

Second fermentation in the bottle permits long ageing on the dead yeast cells (or lees) and the development of complex flavours and fine, long-lasting bubbles.  However, those dead yeast cells need to be extracted somehow, if the final wine is to be crystal clear and not murky with sediment.  This is achieved firstly by gradually tipping the bottles from a horizontal to a vertical position over a number of weeks (if done by hand) or days (if done in a specially designed machine named a gyropalette), a process known as riddling. 

a gyropallette

Then, to extract the sediment the process of disgorgement takes place.  The necks of the upturned bottles are dipped in a sub-zero temperature solution, creating a frozen plug of sediment.  This is then ejected by turning the bottles upright and removing the bottle cap.  The frozen sediment shoots out under pressure from the carbon dioxide-induced fizziness in the wine.  The bottle is then topped up with wine, plus some sugar solution (or dosage) to give the required sweetness level from ultra brut (no sugar) to demi sec (40grams per litre or so).  Cork on and voilà, the wine has completed its transformation into fizz and just needs to rest and recover from all the excitements of riddling and disgorgement.

Sediment in the neck of the bottle post-riddling

 Many French wine regions produce Crémants, some of which more or less resemble Champagne, especially if they use the traditional Champagne grapes, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.  Crémant from the Loire will be dominated by Chenin Blanc, which is plentiful there, giving it a different flavour profile.  Alsace, which is the biggest Crémant producing region, tends to make its Crémant from the fruity and neutral Pinot Blanc.  Here are some that you might come across in this country.  But the best fun is to be had – and of course keenest prices - if you come across a crémant producer on your own travels in France.

Langlois-Château Crémant de Loire - £11.50 from www.thechampagneshop.com

Langlois is part of the Bollinger stable, so they know a thing or two about creating quality bubbles.  Chenin Blanc is complemented by Chardonnay, and lees ageing has given it bready aromas and flavours.

Pfister Crémant d’Alsace - £14.65 from www.slurp.co.uk

Unusually for Alsace, this is 50% Chardonnay, giving the wine elegance to complement the fruit of the Pinot Blanc.  Made by a young female winemaker who clearly knows what she’s doing.

Louis Bouillot Perle de Vigne Crémant de Bourgogne - £9.99 a bottle when you buy 2 at Majestic

Crémant de Bourgogne is geographically closest to Champagne and is the Crémant that we see most often in this country.  This one is a  reliable quality fizz from a big producer where noble Chardonnay and Pinot Noir rub shoulders with lowlier varieties Gamay and Aligoté.