Don’t let snobs RUIN a perfectly good WINE

Seated next to a glossy, but dull, couple, I was horrified when they spat out the sparkling wine they had just tasted upon realising it was Prosecco. “We only drink Champagne,” they said proudly.

Apart from summing up Toronto’s awfulness for me – it combines the elite posturing of New York with the charm and panache of Swindon – the incident made me swear never to let my love of wine reach such loftiness.

And anyway, the couple were wrong. There is a good deal of sparkling wine actually worth swallowing, even if it does not hail from France‘s fawned-over north-east.

Champagne’s top substitute in Britain is, of course, Spain‘s Cava. It’s made in the same manner – its fizz comes from adding a little extra sugar and yeast to fermented wine in the bottle, the residue of which is then slowly shaken into the bottle’s neck, then frozen and removed. It is an expensive way to make wine sparkle, but it does undeniably create more interesting flavours and help develop a fine, long-lasting foam.

Cava’s similarity to Champagne, however, ends there. With different grapes (usually Maccabeo, Parellada and Xarel-lo) grown in far warmer, drier conditions, Cava is usually slightly sweeter than Champagne. Furthermore – and this may just be me losing my marbles – it seems to have a faint taste of rubber, which I quite like, but could be annoying to those who, well, don’t like rubber.

Seeing as the shelves of every off-licence in Britain are buckling under the stuff, you could do a lot worse than the perfectly serviceable Freixenet Cordon Negro Brut. My choice, however, is Gran Campo Viejo Cava Brut Reserva, available for around £7 at Sainsbury’s, with pleasant green apple and lemon flavours coupled with the usual breadiness gained from its second fermentation.

As for me, I still prefer Prosecco. The production of Italy’s best-known sparkling wine is far more rudimentary than Champagne or Cava, but often makes up for its simplicity with intense fruitiness. It’s produced in the Charmat method – instead of secondary fermentation in the bottle, the wine gets its fizz in steel tanks. When the extra sugar and yeast have done their work, the wine is filtered and bottled under pressure.

Much Prosecco is cheap and cheerful – which often means just cheap and cheerless – but when it’s good, it’s lovely, frivolously off-dry and dripping with stone fruit and pear, as well as the expected citrus. When seeking something better, look out for the subregions of Valdobbiadene, Conegliano and Cartizze on the label – although you are actually pretty well served by Tesco’s Finest, at a reasonable £8.99. With a flowery nose and a good dose of pear on the tongue, it’s the sort of wine you can enjoy without feeling obliged to, God forbid, take seriously.

(courtesy FTAdviser.com)