As the clock strikes midnight on December 31st and the year resets, hosts and hostesses all around the world pop bottles of sparkling wine—Champagne, Prosecco, Cava, and everything in between. But picking the right sparkling wine to bring as a hostess gift can turn into a stressor if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Maybe you look at the labels and find yourself asking Blanc de Blancs? Brut? Why can’t these labels be in English? But buying wine shouldn’t make you feel stupid, because your ultimate goal is to share it with friends, family, and partygoers. Or perhaps you’d like to impress strangers at a bar with your order, if that’s your pleasure. At TABLE, we love nothing more than celebrating gathering together. So, we asked industry experts and picked our brains for some of the best bottles to bring as a hostess gift to remember.
Unpacking Some Sparkling Wine Lingo
- If you see Brut, that means the wine is dry and low in sugar. A champagne called Brut must contain less than 12 grams of added sugar.
- The word Cru refers to a village where grapes grow. There was once a system that ranked how much winemakers in certain villages would get paid based on their soil, the age of the vines, and other factors, hence why some regions got the term Grand Cru or Premier Cru.
- If a label says Blanc de Blancs, that means the wine is a white wine made of white grapes, as opposed to a white wine with a mixture of white and red grapes. (You can make Champagne out of Pinot Noir, a red grape, as well. That would be a Blanc de Noir).
- Cuvée (meaning “tank”) refers to the first pressing of grapes for Champagne. This would be the first 2,050 liters of grape juice from 4,000kg of grapes. But it gets confusing, because in non-Champagne wines, cuvée means a mixture of two kinds of grapes, so you’ll often see it on pretty ordinary bottles of wine at the supermarket, too. Look for it on sparkling wines for high quality, but if you see it on an $8 bottle of flat wine, all it’s telling you is that more than one grape variety is in there.
- Reserve typically means a wine has been aged longer, and thus is generally going to have a higher quality, set aside for special occasions. However, outside of Europe, it’s less of a marker of quality, since there isn’t any rule around who can use it. If you see it on a California Cabernet Sauvignon or a Malbec, it could be that the winemaker just wanted to make the bottle sound fancier.
Impress With These Sparkling Wines for Your Hostess Gift
“Mix it up this holiday season with an Austrian sparkler,” recommends sommelier Elizabeth Dames of Wine Entwined. This wine, coming from one of the oldest estates in Austria with records dating back to 1171, uses the traditional champenois method with Pinot Noir, Gruner Veltliner, and Riesling. “Gobelsburg cuts no corners when making this wine, including using grapes from some of the single best vineyards in Kamptal as its base, aging the wine on the lees for 36 months, and hand riddling, a process that most do by machine. The result is electric! The wine is bright, zesty, and citrusy while also having depth and texture with hints of toasted hazelnuts and buttered croissant,” Dames explained.
“Vintage Champagne? ALWAYS worth the price point,” sommelier Alexander Riola of Fish Nor Fowl noted to TABLE. At 50% Chardonnay and 50% Pinot Noir, this Brut has a rich mouthfeel. It has brioche and almond tones, and a yellow florality with some notes of ripe anjou pairs. Five years of Lees aging gives it maturity, with pinpointed bubbles and refreshing acidity.
For a bubbly non-Champagne, Riola loves Cremant d’Alsace. “So much variety and playful nuances in each bottle derive from the descriptive terroir & aromatic varietals,” he said. This varietal comes from 25+ yr old vines, stainless steel fermentation and aging, and 18 months on the lees. It’s dry, bright, mineral-driven, and gets a finessed and complex taste from the combination of 60% Pinot Auxeroius, 10% Pinot Blanc, 10% Riesling, 10% Pinot Gris, and 10% Pinot Noir.
Riola proclaims this to be the best Lambrusco he’s ever had. Lambrusco has many deriders for its mineral-driven flavor that can appear as chalkiness, but for the right person (potentially me), it can make a lovely personalized gift. It also goes quite well with certain desserts, so depending on what party you’re attending, and its perky effervescence combined with smoothness makes it delightful for a festive night.
A refreshing domestic sparkling wine that pairs well with seafood and fried food, made in the method Champenoise with 100% Pinot Noir. It has an intense, rich mouthfeel with fresh strawberries, Bartlett pear, and red apple. Riola recommends this if you’re on the hunt for an American sparkling wine from the beautiful wine regions of upstate New York.
Maybe you’ve got a oenophile friend who’s started reading Alice Feiring and is now side-eyeing conventional winemaking processes. A bottle of Veuve-Clicquot won’t do for that person, as while it may be classy, the natural wine lover wants something with more character. Riola pointed to this Pet-Nat with an eclectic and complex composition of 41% Blaufrankish, and 36% Cabernet Franc, 23% Saperavi, mixing the terroirs of Central Europe with the unique, ancient wine region of the Republic of Georgia. It’s bone dry with notes of ripe red fruits and bright herbs.
Champagne Nicolas Feuillatte is the oldest union of champagne producers in the world. A bottle of this bubbly makes a wonderfully classic hostess gift, Mia Malm of wine-focused Malm Communications in Napa Valley said. It has a strong and sensuous aroma, with a crisp acidity on the tongue and expressive tasting notes. Though there are many sparkling wines out there, sometimes you wonder why we must reinvent the wheel. Champagne is the reigning champion hostess gift for a reason, and its European prestige and celebratory energy are best for the holidays.
Wine Enthusiast called this “one of the best sparkling wines in California” and rated it a 96. French for “the dream,” Malm pointed to Le Rêve as a sparkling wine for those who might want the California terroir with some unique tasting notes of apple blossom and brioche, with notes of fresh baked lemon meringue pie. Though as any wine aficionados trying to one-up you in an argument will tell you, sparkling wine outside of the Champagne region is not technically champagne, don’t knock California wine ‘til you try it. The Judgment of Paris also begs to differ over any snobbery about American wines.
A personal recommendation, as so much of wine is about the story of a bottle and one’s own experience of what’s inside. My landlord gave me a bottle of Mumm Napa Brut Prestige for New Years in 2023, a touching gesture after I had had a year of personal and professional turmoil. It won’t break the bank, but it shows someone that you care and that you know a little beyond the Google results for “Best Sparkling Wine.” It’s full of light and refreshing fruit notes without that bready aftertaste, neither too dry nor too sweet, with a crisp finish.
Let’s say you have a red wine purist at your party. Fear not, you can still enjoy the festivity of bubbles. Adam Knoerzer of Burghundy suggests a slightly sparkling red from Italy’s Piedmont region. Since it’s sometimes a dessert wine, Brachetto d’Acqui is a good hostess gift at a party with chocolate cake or chocolate-covered strawberries. Knoerzer recommends anything in the $20 range, whether it’s Banfi’s Rosa Regale or an offering from Marenco or Braida. Brachetto is vivacious, like you want your holiday season to feel.
Knoerzer led us to an off-the-beaten path to sparkling white Zitsa from Greece. From a grape called Debina, it’s crisp, citrusy, and fresh, with rich foam and apple and pear notes. Though Greece is a perhaps an underdog wine region, winemaker Lifteris Glivanos helped pioneer the Zitsa Protected Designation of Origin, and this is a wine worth trying. Buy this if you’re at a party with some wine hipsters you want to impress. Put some crib notes in your pocket so that you get all the details right!
Story by Emma Riva / Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova
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