I had to write about a great sparkling wine I had last week as it was really impressive. Now that we are into the holiday season I am sure many people are looking to find good sparkling wine, but so many are expensive and just as many are cheap and quite awful. Personally, I love sparkling wine when it is well made it can be so interesting, delicious and downright refreshing. Unfortunately finding a really good sparkler that is also a good price can be rather difficult, so when I do find one I get quite excited about it.
This wine produced by Philippe Perdriaux proprietor of Domaine de Vaugondy in Vouvray, which is an appellation in the Loire Valley of France. In Vouvray pretty much the only grape that is grown is Chenin Blanc, which, although rather unfashionable right now, is easily one of the greatest white wine grapes in the world. It is really only rivaled by Riesling or very well made Chardonnay in its aging ability (100 year old Chenin's are still around), versatility (dry, sweet, sparkling) and pure reverence (Coulee de Serrant).
According to the North American importer for this wine, Sevier, Perdriaux is a small individual producer who grows his own grapes and makes his own wine. He grows only Chenin Blanc on steep hillside vineyards composed of siliceous clay and limestone. His vines are roughly 20 to 55 years old which he uses to craft a dry Vouvray, a semi dry Vouvray and this dry sparkling wine. His sparkling wine is made in the traditional method (methode traditionelle or methode classique) which is the same method used in Champagne. It is non vintage so it is made from reserve wines as well new ones, the perecentage of which I do not know. I also do not know the dosage level or date. It was just released at the LCBO last weekend and retails for $18.
The wine is pale golden almost ivory in colour. The nose begins with subtle notes of spiced pear, stone fruits and fresh hay with wafts of fresh dirt/tilled earth here and there. The wine begins explosively on the palate with a panoply of flavours including sweet lemon, spiced honey, almonds and red cherries. It then settles to a lovely long sweet mineral fruit finish complicated by more subtle soil/tilled earth notes. The wine is absolutely fascinating and complex but at the same time so delicious and refreshing. It is impeccably made, so well balanced and at this price is an amazing value. Excellent.
What I loved most about this wine is that it really is so delicious and so refreshing that you could actually drink it all night long. It is a great sparkling wine for this time of year because even the most casual wine drinking would find it really tasty. But for those wine nerds around there is so much complexity and nuance that you really could talk about it all night as well. So, so good is all I can say. If you don't believe me Peter Liem probably one of the greatest wine writers and experts on sparkling wine around, gave this wine a great review as well. If you haven't read his blog or articles in Wine and Spirits Magazine then I would highly recommend doing so.
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