Bouvet Brut Signature (Sparkling Wine)

I don't drink sparkling wine all that often. Typically, it's a wedding/New Years kind of beverage for me. But the PIT (Partner in Tasting) and I had a cold bottle kicking around from a previous wine tasting so we popped it two nights ago. It was either that or this weird dessert wine that's been sitting next to the rotting red leaf lettuce for months. This wine, a Bouvet Brut Signature (France), turned out to be right up our alley: at $9.99 a bottle at BevMo it's cheap and it's a truly lovely (cheapfun) sparkling wine. This wine is produced from 90% Chenin Blanc and 10% Chardonnay. It's dry and crisp, not all candy, cloyingly sweet like many cheap sparklings and has a light, fruity nose. Wine Enthusiast says this wine's finish "wraps you in hints of vanilla and light toast." Eek. Either that or a grape Pashmina. This wine is produced by Bouvet-Ladubay, a cellar founded by Etienne Bouvet in 1851. Etienne Bouvet is the second-oldest sparkling wine-producing house in Saumur, a which is in the Loire Valley of France. We drank this wine with pizza (DOH! DER!!) because it was what we decided to order out after popping the cork. It felt like we should be celebrating something. "Isn't champagne a beautiful thing?" I asked the PIT. Of course, this wasn't true champagne, but it bubbled over in the glass, so that counts for something. "It looks like a bubbling fish tank," I say, as I peer at my fizzy glass. We finally toast to Dallas winning a razor-close NBA playoff game -- by one point -- against the Spurs. (No, we aren't from Dallas, but we like the team, Mark Cuban's constant anxiety-ridden presence aside.) I give this sparkling wine two stars. It's a good, solid wine. And the bottle DOES get finished. As an aside, I just remembered a funny thing about sparkling wine from my friend Kim's wedding shower. We tried about eight different bottles of sparkling of all different prices so she could pick a decent toasting bottle for her wedding. All told, I think seven out of the eight of us preferred the cheapest bottle. Shows you what sticking a bag over a label can do. Or maybe we just didn't know any better. I'll try to include the name of the bottle that won in a future post.

May 15, 2006

Bouvet Brut Signature (Sparkling Wine)