Last night we went to a sparkling wine tasting hosted by one of our local liquor stores. I had never been to a sparkling wine tasting and thought it would be fun. Champagne and sparkling wine is really hard for me to buy because for one we don’t drink much sparkling wine which makes it difficult to pick out a good bottle and two the price of sparkling wine is all over the place, anywhere from under $10 to that of my monthly mortgage payment.

It wasn’t a large group for the tasting, there were a couple of empty tables with glasses poured of our six selections leaving them victims of the table of three women to our immediate right. The three slurped their glasses and then went about snagging unattended glasses even asking the couple in front of us to pass over a favorite glass on their table. One word, rude. They talked throughout the presenter’s dissertation making it difficult to catch all of the information I would have liked to learn.

The first glass was a Cava, an inexpensive Spanish sparkling wine called Freixenet Blanc di Blanc, for <$9, served as a reception glass. It was dry and I could taste the telltale chardonnay grape. The six wines in the tasting ranged in price from $15 to $88 and surprisingly my favorite came in at $23. I was not a fan of the Laurent-Perrier Cuvée Rosé Brut, the $88 bottle we tasted. To me it was too dry and bitter. My favorite was the Renardat Fache Cerdon du Bugey, a rosé the was slightly sweet and only had 7% alcohol, which means I could probably drink a lot before I realized that I couldn’t walk.

I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t get to taste any Proseccos, an Italian sparkling wine. Those are my personal favorite sparkling wines, not too sweet and not as dry as brut Champagne. All in all we had a good time and came away with a couple of bottles to add to our meager collection.