Wine for the holidays, without the stress

Jon Bonné Lifestyle editor • Profile

Holiday time. That means bubbly, party wine and bottles to buy as gifts. Let's consider them all.

I often see wine ratings in various publications that give scores to non-vintage (NV) sparkling wines. How do I know I'm buying the blend that they have tasted and rated? Is there any way to distinguish one year's NV bottling from another? –Dave, Fairfield, Conn.

If only. You probably could get very wonky with tiny batch numbers printed on bottles and the like, but ultimately, there’s almost no way to know when the NV bottle you’re buying was bottled. You can ask, but unless you’re buying a new type of wine that only recently went into production, it isn’t the sort of information that’s passed on from winemaker to retailer.

In fact, the entire concept of NV was devised to allow Champagne houses to blend wines across a range of years in order to preserve a “house style” — a taste profile that defined the winery year after year. It was also a hedge against poor vintages. In theory, it wouldn’t matter when you bought an NV wine because it would always taste the same.

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In theory. In reality, taste can vary slightly from batch to batch — and even can change as the wine sits on the shelf. Your best bet is to ask a retailer when the wine in question arrived, but even then there’s no knowing how long a wholesaler (or even the winery) held on to it before it showed up in your neighborhood.  That makes it even more important to find trustworthy reliable labels — big name or small — that please you year after year.

Many publications also frequently retaste NV wines, which helps give a sense of recent quality. Wine Spectator lists 13 scores for Veuve Clicquot’s popular yellow-label NV brut from 1987 to 2004. The highest score (91) was from 1991; the most recent was an 88.

Real bubbles?
How do I know if a sparkling wine is naturally carbonated or artificially carbonated?  -Maria, Portland, Ore.

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Artificially carbonated wine has nothing to do with true sparkling wine, aside from having bubbles.  Luckily, artificial carbonation is out of favor nowadays for all but the least expensive bubblies — and with true bubbly available as cheap as $6 per bottle, there’s no reason to drink the fake stuff.

Unfortunately, there are few guaranteed ways to tell which is which, though true Champagne will never be carbonated using anything but the traditional method of creating a second fermentation in the bottle to generate carbon dioxide. One good rule of thumb: Any wine marked “Méthode Champenoise” or “Méthode Traditionale” or the like is almost certain to be naturally carbonated.  Most decent Spanish cavas — even those under $10 — will be naturally carbonated.

Words to describe bubbly are often suspect. Any American wine that calls itself “Champagne” is most certainly not. “Champagne” legally defines only those wines from that region of France.  The popular term “brut,” though, is a legitimate description of the wine’s dry style. (Ironically, “extra dry” sparklers are actually rather sweet.)

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