WHEW!!! I’ve participated in several Wednesday night wine chats before, but to actual host/facilitate one…MY WORD!!! So much tweeting I could barely keep it all together!

For those that don’t know, #winechat happens every Wednesday from 9-10 PM EST. There is a new topic every week and people can reach out to the ‘hosts’ of wine chat if they want to take over a specific night. So, I signed up to host April 17th and the topic of the evening was Wines of Brasil. Haven’t heard of them? I hadn’t either before twitter. Which as you already know is where I get my breaking news info!!

Anyway, I met Katie Cavanaugh on Twitter who put me in contact with Wagner Aliberti who I eventually met at a wine tasting in Baltimore in real life. Follow? Good! So I kept in contact with Wagner and decided to taste Wines of Brasil for the chat and I got a few friends and colleagues together to taste and tweet with me.

We tasted the following 3 wines:

Salton Sparkling  (Chardonnay and Riesling)

Chalky mid-palate but very refreshing. Solid stream of bubbles and flavors of tart green apple, citrus rind and hints of pineapple. This is perfect on it’s on before a meal or paired with creamy or smokey cheeses. We finished this entire bottle.

Salton Flowers (Gewurztraminer, Malvasia, Moscato Giallo)

This is what you sip at the beach with sand between your toes! I’m talking apricot, peach, tropical fruit, florals on the nose. A bit of dryness on the palate and you definitely get that spicy kick from the Gewurz in the blend. Pair this with spicier foods (thai, indian). lemon herb chicken, tilapia, scallops, your glass…anything goes!

Salton Tannat

More notably from Uruguay, the region in Brasil that actually grows this grape borders Uruguay. Makes sense. But Tannat is also gaining in popularity in Virginia and most people on Twitter talking with us for #winechat are familiar with the VA Tannat. A bit lighter than I’m used to, but still the dark berry, green, funky-ness on the nose. Tart, dark fruit on the palate but the finish fell just a bit short for me. Other tasters enjoyed the herbs and chocolate found on the palate for this one. Need food for your Tannat? Try red meat, pasta with red sauce and game.

Well there you have it! A recap of #winechat. Hopefully you now understand why that pic of me was sideways :-)

Hope everyone had a great weekend with great drinks! Now that the weekend is over, put the Moscato down and try something else. Please?

Renardat-Fache NV Bugey-Cerdon Méthode Ancestrale Rosé

Pronounced Boo ghee Seir dohn, this wine region located in East France sits between Burgundy and Rhone and off to the right. Bugey has produced wines under the Vin Délimité de Qualité Supérieure (VDQS, which is typically just a holding place before a wine region is granted AOC status) since 1958. On May 28, 2009, INAO (the organization that regulates French agricultural products) gave its final approval for the elevation of Bugey to Appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) status. Now the producers from the new Bugey AOC appellation are thus seeing their efforts to build an identity for the wines in their region rewarded.

In order to legally have the name Cerdon from the Bugey region, the rose sparkling wine must be made either from 100% Gamay or a blend of Gamay and Poulsard. Being close in proximity to Beaujolais which is home to the Gamay grape, it makes sense that the Bugey region would have luck with the Gamay grape as well. Grapes are picked by hand and fermented in chilled vats. The young and light wine is then bottled, along with its active yeast and considerable unfermented sugars. Under pressure of the cork, the wine continues to ferment, gaining a higher percentage of alcohol but retaining a nice amount of sweetness. This method of making sparkling wine is called the ‘methode ancestrale’, which skips the method champenoise process of disgorgement in order to produce wines with slight sweetness that still contain particles of dead yeast matter in the form of lees in the bottle.

In a couple of online searches the term ‘Adult KoolAid’ was used. Let’s open up this bottle and take a sip!

Dark pink in color with bubbles for days, this sparkler has a delicate, floral nose, reminiscent of an Italian Lambrusco. Slightly ripe cherry, strawberry flavors balanced with medium acidity provide a nice complexity to this rose sparkler. A Jolly Rancher candy comes to mind on the finish, but still retains a crisp dryness. It is not too sweet for the dry wine lover, yet has enough sweetness and flavor for those that like a sweeter sparkler to sip. It’s perfect as an outdoor patio sipper or a sparkler to start off parties during the upcoming holiday season. For after dinner, with its strawberry flavors, I can see this paired with strawberry shortcake or strawberries and cream. The Cerdon is an extremely versatile sparkling wine that you can’t help but love. Drink Up!

Every Wednesday night, 9PM EST, you can find me on Twitter chatting it up with the fine folks of Noble House Hotels. This week’s topic was Sparkling Wines. Clearly I had tons to say!!

I love sparkling wine. On its own, in cocktails, just in my glass! Cool thing about the chat tonight was the affordable sparkling wines that everyone enjoys and some of the sparkling cocktails that people tweeted pics of and recipes to.

Champassion

Orange vodka, passionfruit puree, bubbly, and a teeny bit of simple syrup.

Skinny Jean

Bubbly, apple brandy, muddled fresh raspberries, and agave syrup

Noble Sunset

Vodka, juices, bubbly

And for inexpensive, a few go-to bubblys are Cava, St Hilaire Limoux, Cooks, Tott’s, Monmousseau, and Gruet.

Now go forth and enjoy some bubbly…NOW!!

I told myself this year that I would drink more bubbly…from prosecco, to sekt, to cava, to true champagne and everything in between. Bubbly should be enjoyed for special occasions and just because. My ‘just because’ today is Wine Blogging Wednesday! Today’s topic is Value Sparkling Wine. When I saw the topic, I already had a sparkling wine in mind (Blanquette de Limoux), but unfortunately I couldn’t find it. So, plan B, Fleuraison Blanc de Blancs.                

This sparkling wine is made from the white Airen grape that is native to Spain. I’ve often heard the stat that Airen is the most widely planted grape on the planet. To make Fleuraison, the 1^st fermentation for the base occurs in Spain at cool temps. This produces a base wine with crisp, fruity flavors and great acidity. Once the wine is stable, it is sent to Languedoc where it then undergoes the 2^nd fermentation under pressure. At 4 atmospheres of pressure, the wine is bottled, put under cork and finished off with a foil capsule. Also called ‘Vin Mousseaux’ the finished sparkling wine has an amazing perfume, floral aroma which is quite appropriate as Fleuraison means ‘flowering’. I found yeasty, bread dough flavors on the palate with sort of a hazelnut finish. Fleuraison is very delicate in flavor so while I do enjoy this alone, it is my favorite sparkler to add orange juice for a Mimosa or crème de cassis for a Kir Royale. Either way, at $12, this is a sparkler to keep on hand for my ‘just because’ days.