Sparkling wines for New Year's Eve

This year, leave the champagne behind and try a fun, and sometimes fruity, sparkling wine for your New Year's Eve celebration instead. Here are a few suggestions for sparkling wines made by local Lehigh Valley Wine Trail wineries:

Amore Vineyards

• White Mist - Slightly dry, tingly and sparkling.
• Celebration - Pink, sparkling, spicy fun.
• Blueberry Mist - Sweet and bubbly with natural blueberry flavor.
• Peach Mist - Sweet and bubbly with natural peach flavor. Blend it with orange juice  to make a great mimosa.
• Strawberry Mist - Sweet and bubbly with natural strawberry flavor.

Clover Hill Winery

• Blackberry Sparkler - A sweet, sparkling wine made with blackberry
• Brut - Produced in the traditional method of making sparkling wine, Méthode Champenoise, our Brut has no perceivable sweetness, showcasing yeasty and fruity flavors.
• Generations Sparkling Pinot Noir - Made in the Méthode Champenoise fashion, this sparkling wine is produced from 100% Pinot Noir grapes from our Broxspen Vineyard. This dry sparkler shows delicate flavors of strawberry mingling with a classic yeasty flavor.

Pinnacle Ridge

• Brut Rosé
• Blanc de Blanc 

Franklin Hill

• Brut (Methode Champenoise)

Keep in mind that at this time of year supplies may be limited for some sparkling wines.  So we suggest calling ahead to the winery you plan to visit to verify they still have the one you want in stock.

Here are a few tips for your sparkling wine, courtesy of Clover Hill:

* Always have your bubbly well chilled prior to opening. We suggest putting the bottle in the refrigerator for a couple hours and then the freezer for 20 minutes prior to opening.
*As much fun as it is to shake the bottle and shoot the cork, you do lose most of the wine when you do so!  Remove the wire hood on the bottle and keep your thumb on top of the cork. Hold the cork in one hand and slowly twist the bottle. Always have a towel and a champagne flute close by.
*Sparkling wines always add a festive feel to any celebration, but they are also great food wines. Some of our favorite bubbly pairings include a creamy brie with quince paste, steamed Cape Cod lobsters, crab stuffed mushrooms or smoked salmon.
 
Happy New Year!

Celebrate the New Year with local sparkling wines

New Year's Eve is almost here and we'd love to be part of your celebration. Several of our wineries offer sparkling varieties that would be perfect at your party or dining room table. So ring in the New Year with a local wine.  Here are some suggestions from a few of our Lehigh Valley wineries. Hope you have a great 2011!

• Blue Mountain suggests making a Sparkling Peach drink. Add a few fresh peach slices to enhance the flavor or orange slices for a “Fuzzy Navel” type drink.
• Clover Hill Winery encourages you to celebrate New Year’s with one of their handcrafted Sparkling wines - Brut, Cuvee, Sparkling Pinot Noir or Blackberry Sparkler. 
• Cherry Valley suggests you try their Blackberry Spumante and White Spumante this year.
• Franklin Hill is promoting their Harvest Berry, an effervescent Rasberry wine.
• Galen Glen recommends toasting the arrival of 2011 with their limited release, 2010 Winter Mountain White. Newly bottled and spritzy, its flavors mimic a semi-sweet sparkling wine. 

Sparkling wines and champagne 101

Our friends at Clover Hill Winery in Breinigsville recently sent out an e-newsletter to remind its loyal customers to pick up their sparkling wines for their New Year's Eve celebrations. It included an overview on sparkling wines and champagne that we thought we be of interest to the readers of our blog. So we are borrowing the information below from Clover Hill. Many thanks to Kari Skrip for sharing it with us!

Sparkling Wine Vs. Champagne

Many of you have probably wondered what is the difference between a sparkling wine and a Champagne. The difference lies in the geography. “Champagne” is a sparkling wine that is produced in the champagne region of France according to strict government regulations. That same carbonated beverage if produced in the USA is properly termed “Sparkling Wine” (it is often nicknamed by wine makers as a “Sparkler”). Somewhere along the way Americans started calling some of their sparkling wines “Champagne”, using the word Champagne in a generic sense. Sparkling wine is made in the USA and Champagne comes from the Champagne region of France.

What is Methode Champenoise?

All true Champagnes and most premium quality sparkling wines, (including Clover Hill Vineyards & Winery Sparkling Wine, of course), are made in the traditional method known as “Methode Champenoise”. According to Methode Champenoise, the wine goes through a second fermentation in the same bottle in which it is sold. With the secondary fermentation in the bottle, the wine becomes more complex, different flavors develop, and each bottle becomes slightly different than the others. Each bottle takes on a personality of its own. The end result is a light delicate wine that produces elegant columns of small tingly bubbles. There are other methods of producing sparkling wines but they are not quite the same, so look for the saying “Methode Champenoise” or “fermented in this bottle” on the label, or even better, just look for Clover Hill’s Sparkling Wine!

Sweet Vs. Dry

Sparkling wine labels can often be very confusing and not very user friendly. Usually American wine labels contain a variety of French terms on the label, for instance, Methode Champenoise, which was discussed earlier. Also the level of sweetness is defined using traditional French terms. These French terms are listed below from driest to sweetest.

Brut Natural – 0%-0.5% Sugar – Bone dry
Brut – 0.5% - 1.5% sugar - No perceivable sweetness
Extra Dry – 1.2%-2% sugar - Slight sweetness
Sec - 1.7%-3.5% sugar - Noticeable sweetness
Demi-Sec – 3.3%-5% sugar – Very sweet
Doux – 5.0% plus – Extremely sweet