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The Okanagan Valley’s Tinhorn Creek winery may be roughly 8,000 kilometres away from Champagne, but its Blanc de Blanc from the 2018 vintage might convert even the most ardent champagne drinker to a different bubbly.
The world of sparkling wine is vast, varied, and vibrant. It’s no exaggeration to say that there’s a sparkling wine for most budgets and every occasion—whether it’s Wednesday, a new puppy, or a golden anniversary. Exploring it is an adventure well worth undertaking.
The combination of grape varieties and growing conditions in England results in sparkling wines that tend to show excellent flavour complexity and the high acidity expected of this style of wine. The generous bubbles stream in beads and are often tiny, a trait associated with fine sparkling wine.
No longer considered a drink solely for special occasions, sparkling wine is now widely drunk on its own as a casual sipping wine, as an aperitif, and with meals. And although champagne might be the gold standard, it has plenty of competition.
Two decades in, the foresight that judged this part of Nova Scotia ideal for making fine sparkling wines has borne fruit in more ways than one.
So as you prepare a meal from this year’s harvest – whether of meat, fish, vegetables, grains, or fruit – complement it with an earlier year’s grape harvests.
Lambrusco, the sparkling wine from northeastern Italy, is in the midst of a major makeover, and it’s high time to taste it again.
One of the big shifts in wine during the past two decades has been the rise in quality and popularity of sparkling wines. No doubt there’s a connection.
The current international market for sparkling wines is dominated by two styles: champagne and prosecco. But there’s one variety that deserves a lot more attention.
