Popping open a bottle of bubbly makes any night feel like a celebration. I think it’s the whole anticipation of the corking flying off the bottle (and hopefully you aim the bottle at something other than your rented apartment’s window… yikes…) and all those tiny bubbles flowing out the top.

So when I got my hands on a bottle of Barefoot Wine’s new Barefoot Bubbly Chardonnay champagne, I decided to pop the cork on a Thursday night mid-September. The occasion? A full moon? Spike was playing a marathon of “CSI” episodes I’d never seen? I didn’t burn my homemade macs and cheese? Sure! Cheers!

For those of us who have no idea what makes champagne a Chardonnay champagne and find the world of Champagne vs. champagne confusing, I consulted my favorite little wine book, appropriately called “The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Wine.” (Who you callin’ an idiot?) My pint-size guide says that because the bubbly isn’t from the northern French region of Champagne, it’s a sparking wine, denoted by the lower case “c” in “champagne.” Got it. And it’s called Chardonnay champagne, because Barefoot used Chardonnay grapes to make the wine.

It becomes bubbly through the method the vintner uses to carbonate the wine. In Barefoot’s case, they use the tank method or Charmat method (named for the French dude who discovered this nifty technique). I know this because it’s written right on the bottle (smart! I know). “The Guide to Wine” says that the wine is put into a pressurized tank, and yeast and sugar are added to provoke a second fermentation, which produces the bubbles. Then the bubbly is bottled under pressure to keep it bubbly. Apparently, this is the most popular way to make sparking wines, as it’s the most inexpensive, and the bubbles last the longest. Perfect for a winery that wants to produce an affordable, long-lasting champagne that can be stored on supermarket shelves.

So, now I’m sure you’re like, “Bla, bla, bla. WHAT DOES IT TASTE LIKE?”

I’ve tasted everything from Andre (three bottles for $4, baby!) to Dom Perignon. To me, it’s all drinkable, but not my first alcholic beverage choice. However, Barefoot’s sparking Chardonnay is so mild and subtly sweet, that I actually enjoyed drinking it for the flavor, not for the “let’s all drink Champagne”-feeling of camaraderie. It’s not dry at all or have that kick-you-in-the-taste buds tartness, and it tastes more like a champagne-flavored Cleary Canadian (you know, that fruit-flavored soda) than a bottle of bubbly. The after taste is really pleasant and smooth.

The bottle tells me that this sparkling wine has the flavors of green apples, pears and a hint of vanilla. I can taste everything but the vanilla, but perhaps that’s the ingredient that smooths out the tartness of apples and pears and makes it incredibly drinkable. This is the kind of treat I’d buy to go along with apples, grapes, Camembert and a chick-flick comedy.

Maybe on a random Thursday night mid-October.

Tags: champagne, Wine

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 11:02 am and is filed under Wine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.