10 of the best Sparkling Wines
Nothing says celebration more than the popping of corks, and there’s no better time to sample fine fizz, with excellent expressions from all over the globe. Douglas Blyde charges his glass
Bolney Eighteen Acre Rose Brut 2011 Susex, England
This deeply coloured rosé is
made from the oldest vines at
Bolney, in the South Downs.
At the helm of production is
Sam Linter, whose parents
began the conversion of a
former chicken farm into
vineyards in 1972 with the aim
of recreating wines savoured
in Germany closer to home.
This textured, strawberry-
and-cherry-scented pink
features the fruit of the
Germanic varieties, which
may not feel fashionable to
lovers of champagne, but are a vital part of the story of
England’s rise to becoming
a serious wine-producing
nation. It’s won many awards,
including gold at this year’s
Global Rosé Masters contest.
Travel Details
£23.99, bolneywineestate.com
Graham Beck Cuvee Clive 2011 Robertson, South Africa
Optimism, quality, consistency
and bravery characterise
South Africa’s wine industry,
which, despite having a
350-plus-year history, has
been reinvented and refined
beyond compare in the era of
democracy. Graham Beck’s
art-filled winery, found off
Route 62, is famed for its
sparkling ‘Cap Classique’ fizz. Winemaker Pieter
Ferreira – better known by
his nickname of ‘Bubbles’
– uses his ‘spaghetti’ of hoses
to make stunning sparkling
wines, the pinnacle being the
rare, restrained Cuvée Clive,
a chardonnay- and pinot
noir-centric fizz only made in the best years.
Travel Details
£33, taste-of-africa.eu
Bleasdale Langhorne Creek Sparkling Shiraz NV Barossa, Australia
Now for something completely different. I recommend not telling guests about this red wine’s bubbles, which, being masked by the intense ruby colour, should come as a pleasant surprise. The historic Bleasdale estate, complete with antique equipment (occasionally put into use), has been deemed a national monument. It was founded in 1850 by an Englishman, Frank Potts. Today, the fourth and fifth generation of the Potts family are still involved in making this unconventional but delicious wine. It’s a positive, juicy, substantial mulberry-pudding-scented red with smooth tannins that can easily tame a tomahawk steak or bring eccentric drama to an English brunch.
Travel Details
£12.95, thewinesociety.com
Billecart-Salmon Demi-Sec NV Champagne, France
Billecart-Salmon was one of the many family-owned
historic champagne houses
that didn’t survive ransack
during the war, which is why
no vintages before 1942 exist.
Headed by sixth-generation
François Roland-Billecart, it is
located at Mareuil-sur-Ay, the
highest rated of Champagne’s
premier cru villages. On taking
over the directorial mantle in 1994, Roland-Billecart
insisted on buying back
bottles from supermarkets
to battle their cost-cutting
antics, in favour of using
independent merchants.
Despite coming from a house
known for discretion, the
Demi-Sec, a softly sweetish,
candyfloss-and-brioche-
scented perfect afternoon
pour, is impossible to miss on
account of its hot pink label.
Travel Details
£39.95, winedirect.co.uk
Bollinger La Grande Annee Brut 2007 Champagne, France
After tasting the beurre
noisette, coconut-scented
1937 Grande Année in the cool
cellars below sleepy-seeming
Ay, I chose to reserve a case of the current incarnation,
La Grande Année 2007 for
my newly minted daughter
to enjoy one day. The bakery
and red-wine-poached-pear
flavours that developed in
the glass of the 1937 (the
year of the late Queen
Mother’s coronation; the
house of Bollinger holds a
Royal Warrant) – were just
beginning to emerge in the
superbly focused 2007. I rate Bollinger’s signature
oak-bevelled style, which is
bold enough to drink with
strong dishes, including curry.
Travel Details
£75, waitrosecellar.com
Allini Pinot Grigio Spumante 2016 Veneto, Italy
The tankerloads of bulk-
harvested workhorse pinot
grigio sponged up from
northern Italy often have about
as much expressivity as the
eyes of a Madame Tussauds
figure. This meekly priced
version, shrewdly created by
Lidl dares to have more than a bit of flair and oomph. Being
neither bland nor flat, it offers
foamy volume in the mouth,
discernible ripe pear flavour
and an elongated, chalky finish
that cries out for shellfish.
Produced from vineyards near
Lake Garda, this pour should,
says Lidl’s wine consultant
Richard Bampfield, evoke, ‘A
land of stunning scenery and
climate for those to have been
to the largest lake in Italy.’
Travel Details
£6.99, Lidl
Pommery Brut Royal Magnum NV Champagne, France
Champagne brings people
together. When I first
discovered these particular
wines, including the lacy,
fresh, mineral Brut Royal –
which makes a magnanimous
statement in magnum – I was
suitably impressed. Jeanne
Alexandrine Louise Pommery
must be champagne’s
best-known widow after
Veuve Clicquot. In 1858 she
took over the running of the
business after the unexpected
death of her husband
Alexandre, continuing to
carve from chalk some 11
miles of cellars, and coining,
in 1874, the ‘Brut’ style when
champagne had habitually
been overly sweetened with
sugar. This wine is perfect
for a family celebration.
Travel Details
Ancre Hill Estate Blanc De Blancs 2011 Monmouth, Wales
This blotter dry, complex wine
with citrus and hazelnut notes
comes from one of only two
biodynamically farmed wine
estates in the UK. Sited in the
picturesque Wye Valley in
Monmouth, Ancre Hill’s first
vines were sown as recently
as 2006 by Richard and Joy
Morris and their winemaker
son David. Their chiselled-in-
feel wines are blended in a
structure insulated by straw
bales. Grapevines, including
limestone-sown chardonnay,
albariño and pinot noir, are
plucked purely on taste. The resulting, multi-award-
winning handmade wines
are the result of small-batch
fermentations, and are
sought after even in fine-
wine capital Bordeaux.
Travel Details
£29.95, tanners-wines.co.uk
Llopart Brut reserva Cava 2014 Catalonia, Spain
This complex organic ‘craft
cava’ is good enough to have
kick-started the revival of the
Spanish fizz. It comes from
one of the country’s longest-
established (dating back to
1887) family run producers.
Matured for a minimum of
18 months, it bears more
relation to champagne than
prosecco in both production
and taste, as evidenced by the
opulent, prolonged notes of
vanilla, toast and wood smoke
present in the bubbles. The
wine blends local grapes
xarel-lo for structure, macabeo
for freshness, and creamy
parellada with chardonnay. It’s equally good from a
red-wine glass paired with
tapas, with salted almonds
or, even better, wet walnuts.
Travel Details
£13.75, allaboutwine.co.uk
Nino Franco Cartizze Di Valdobbiadene Superiore Docg 2016 Veneto, Italy
Primo Franco was one of
the first winemakers to
export prosecco outside
of the Veneto. This wine is
gleaned from the region’s
grand cru. Valued at £1.5m
per hectare, the hill of
Cartizze is a 260-acre suntrap
divided among around 140 growers. Compared
to ‘normal’ prosecco, this
appears softer, sweeter and
longer on the palate. Primo’s
grandfather established the
Cantine in 1919 to revitalise
Valdobbiadene, a town
decimated by its Austrian
occupiers. Franco bolstered
the area’s stock of reserve
wines with grapes bought
from co-operatives.
Travel Details
£29.70, sommelierschoice.co.uk
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