Nurse the Hate: A Quick Buyer's Guide For Sparkling Wine

 I think we can say that 2020 was not a fabulous year.  This New Year's Eve is less about a hopeful ringing in of the New Year than a barbaric purge, a tribal dance on the grave of 2020.  Though there won't be any fabulous parties this New Year's Eve (unless you are in Sturgis SD where undoubtedly .38 Special is playing to 3000 maskless people crammed into a tent), it is still an occasion that deserves to be marked with sparkling wine.  Those crafty French in the Champagne region have pulled off one of the most remarkable multi generational marketing jobs in history.  There is no celebrated occasion on the planet that the first impulse is not to "pop open some champagne".  Weddings, births, engagements, promotions, romance, championships... they all call for champagne.  The branding is so deep that if a morose man walked into a bar after being terminated from his job, sat slumped over at the bar stool, and ordered a glass of champagne, the first impulse would be for the bartender to ignore all the other evidence and ask "What are you celebrating buddy?".  I think we are all that slumped over schlub at the bar at the end of this disastrous year.  Let's open up a sparkler.  We deserve it.  

I was in Giant Eagle grocery store today at the Starbucks counter where the two young men that seem to work most mornings were doing "their thing".  I refer to the skinny one as "The Nimrod" and the chunky one as "The Big Man".  They are like Laurel and Hardy meets Beevis and Butthead.  Let's not pull any punches here.  Those two are a couple of dopes.  They're nice enough, but they are at the absolute limit of their abilities right now.  I am guessing they are total experts at video games and masturbation, but probably not much else.  

As I stood there waiting for my double espresso (which after months The Nimrod stopped calling eXpresso) and the boys started a conversation with each other.  Motioning over to a mountainous display of sparkling wine, The Nimrod said "I am gonna get one of those champagnes for New Year's Eve!".  As the English and Well Bred Southern Girls say, "Bless him".  That display was industrially produced Asti Spumante, California Sparkling Wine and Cheap Ass Prosecco.  All of it was overpriced for what the consumer receives.  It made me think how the wine trade has made sparkling wine about as confusing as health insurance premiums for no apparent benefit.  Assuming you are going to do The Right Thing and open a sparkling wine tonight, I am going to tell you just enough to be dangerous and not fuck up when making your purchase.

Here's the way I see it.  There are two ways to approach bubbles:  quantity or quality.  It all comes down to the situation.  Are you going to be with a small number of people and enjoy a good quality wine?  Or are you going to need to crush a large number of bottles with a small group because someone put on Ryan Seacrest's Rockin' New Year's Eve where some shitty Top 40 group you've never heard of is lip synching their shitty hit which makes some girl gets off the couch and squel "I LOVE THIS SONG!" and then starts to sing off-key and awkwardly do a dance they saw on Tik Tok while the Chinese govt was hacking her financial records?  These are two VERY different scenarios.  

Let's talk about when you want quality.  Champagne is the best quality sparkling wine.  There isn't any real debate.  This is traditional method wine from chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier from the Champagne region in France.  It costs more because it costs the most to produce and it is the best.  You get what you pay for.  Most cost around $50 at retail.  The majority are worth it.  There is nothing wrong with any of the "big house" champagnes, and a few of them are remarkable quality for the sheer volume that is made.  Veuve Cliquot is a bit sweeter, Perrier Jouet is light and floral.  Bollinger is full and bready.  I recommend Pol Roger, a wine Winston Churchill drank every single day, as  a good middle ground.  There are a zillion little labels, sort of Champagne's indie bands, that make wines of varying quality.  Called "grower champagne", these are small family operations.  Just like indie rock bands, a champagne producer can be ruggedly individual in their approach and still make shitty wine.  Some of them might make something you love but no one else knows about.  AR Lenoble is a good one.    

The quantity road, not to be scoffed at, can include drinking very well with cremant (made the same way as champagne but from different areas of France), cava (Spanish grapes used in the same technique as champagne), prosecco (Italian easy drinking tank method bubbles that keep costs lower) and various sparklers from around the planet.  These are between $12-$25 usually.  I drink a lot of these all year long because, dammit, they taste good!  Cremant is what happened when other areas of France tried to get into the Champagne racket.  They use the same techniques, but because of various factors I won't bore you with, they can't completely re-create it.  That doesn't mean they can't be good.  It reminds me of when I see Japanese garage rock bands that do their version of American trash rock, making their own stamp on something they started out trying to cover like a prom band.  I really like the area of Limoux for great Cremant value.  Aimery Rose is an amazing value and usually about $15.  Try cremants from Albert Bichot (Burgundy) and Klingenfus (Alsace) that offer great value around $20.

Cava is something most teenage girls barf up at parties as their friend holds their hair.  The black bottles of Freixenet are available at every drug store, gas station, and grocery store on the planet.  It is the #1 sparkling wine in the world, at 200 million bottles produced per year.  Cava is astonishingly inexpensive and can be very good quality.  I like Marques de Gelida Reserva, but even standbys like Dibon can be very satisfying at $10.  Cava traditionally uses three Spanish grapes that give a unique aroma that can divide people into a "fuck yeah" and "you got any more of that cremant?" camps.  Give one a try at $10.  I like 'em, especially for parties and weddings.

Prosecco is Italian in every sense of the word.  It is smooth, easy, and relaxing.  I still vividly remember the time I saw a stereotypical prosecco producer in a TV interview.  This guy is EXACTLY what you think an Italian wine mogul would look like in an expensive suit, slicked back long gray hair, designer sunglasses and syrupy charm.  He looks at the female reporter, smiles, and leans in.  "Champagne is very nice but it is complicated.  Prosecco is here to relax and enjoy.  It is beautiful and the best way to enjoy life."  He then smiled at the reporter and took a sip.  I assume he then spent the rest of the afternoon having intercourse with her while opening various proseccos.  The guy had the rap down.    Proseccos can be sweet, off-dry, or somewhere in the middle.  The best ones should theoretically have the name "Conegliano Valdobbiadene" somewhere on the label as it would have been sourced from good hillside vineyards.  Italy makes an ocean of prosecco now, so quality can vary, but it tends to not be out-and-out awful.  Pitars makes some good ones, especially the Extra Dry.  

Asti is made the same way prosecco is, but with the Moscato grape instead of the Glera grape used in prosecco.  It is very sweet, but let me let you in on a secret.  A well made Asti is fucking delicious, however this comes with a caveat.  It's so sweet that after a glass you might go into sugar shock.  Drinking Asti all night is like chugging Mello Yello soda.  That first half glass is awesome, but you are going downhill from there.  A bottle of Asti is perfect if you have someone sitting on your couch that only drinks sugary shit and will only pour your champagne down the sink.  Set them up with some Asti and thank me later.

When I was studying all this for my WSET Diploma, I had to taste my way through all of these sparkling wines to identify them blind.  This led me to bring them to band practice where unlike most bands in our genre, we were drinking Lambruscos, Cremant de Die, and Premier Cru Blanc de Blanc champagnes instead of cans of Pabst.  There was collateral damage however, and this was Sugar became addicted to sparkling wine.  Those of you that are close to Sugar know that she is a lady that likes a value, and will chase a deal sometimes into a dark and dangerous place.  The time she bought "Half Off Cottage Cheese" from a gas station in Indiana immediately comes to mind.  Most people don't know that at one of our Brass Rail shows during the bitter end of The Gary Era, she turned to me with a look of great distress as we struggled to communicate over Gary's 1978 Black Sabbath stage volume.  I waited for the guitar solo and got closer to her.  What???  What!  Did!  You!  Say!?!  Sugar kept playing and yelled in my ear.  "I think I sharted!".

When you see bands talk to each other on stage, 75-85% of the time they are asking each other if the other farted.  I always thought Keith and Mick were talking about cool Rolling Stones shit like if Mick had any models lined up for the after party or if Keith scored any weird drugs that I don't even know the name of.  Instead I think they were discussing the likelihood of the smell on stage being Keith or Bill Wyman.  For the record, I bet it was Bill.  He seems like a constant and deadly Farter.  

I bring this up to let you know that there are many sparkling wines for under $10.  They are almost all total tricks to take your money and will give you horrible sugar induced hangovers.  Sugar, looking for a deal, has chased down many of these rabbit holes into strange French Sparkling Wines and off-region Italian spumantes.  Don't let me even get into Cooks and Korbel.  That's something your girlfriend drank in college when she decided she was going to be more sophisticated, but she only had $20 to get through the weekend.  You remember how that added up, right?  She was giddy from 9p-11p and then barfed from 1130-230a.  Do not heed that sirens call.  Stay off those rocks sailor.  Sugar learned the hard way so you don't have to.

I hope this helps and you have as good a New Year's Eve as possible.  It's sad that Dick Clark isn't still alive for that awkward countdown while Ryan Seacrest gamely waited out his death, but we all need to adjust to our new reality.  Have a Happy New Year, and I hope we see you all soon.

Cheers.

G. Miller