Hi All – It’s been a while, but I’m back. We’re coming upon the New Year and I’m looking forward to it. I have a few reasons to celebrate as my mom is getting healthier and I have great family and friends. I’m blessed. I thought this would be an ideal time to review some sparkling wines. Note that these are not champagnes as they are not from grapes in the Champagne region of France. That is a distinction here. I tried three different sparkling wines in order to compare tastes. The first was Martini and Rossi Asti Spumante. This is a sweet sparkling wine made from Italian Moscato grapes. It is along the lines of a Moscato’s sweetness with some hint of pear. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but for those who do like a sweeter sparkling wine, you’d enjoy it. You can find it in many grocery stores for around $12.00 per bottle. The second was Korbel Brut California Champagne (they named champagne, I didn’t). Brut is, by its name, a dry sparkling wine. This was very dry – even more than I’d thought. The description states it has flavors of light citrus and baked apple, but I didn’t taste that at all. In fact, I didn’t taste much of anything even after pairing with raspberries and cheese. This might be a good sparkling wine for use in Mimosas or, even better, Bellini’s, because it was so dry. However, it wasn’t my cup of tea either. I’m beginning to sound like Goldilocks here. You can find it in most grocery stores for around $13.00 per bottle. The third, and final, sparkling wine was Mumm Napa Brut Prestige. This was just right…for me. It is a Brut, but was not nearly as dry as Korbel. It had just a slight sweetness to it and flavors of apple, melon and maybe even pear. I did enjoy this one. You can find it in most grocery stores for $20.00 or so. For those of you expecting a review of Cristal or Dom Perignon, you’ll have to see what Kim Kardashian puts out on Twitter for a review. Her bank account, along with some of her other assets, is much larger than mine. On that note, have a great, safe New Year’s. Wishing you all a great 2017!
