Our bubbly obsession

LOVERS of the bubbly stuff have another excellent reason to choose an Australian sparkling wine over champagne this festive season: besides spending less, they’ll be doing the planet a solid.

Aussie winemakers face a tough task in getting locals to choose their sparklings over imports, with trade statistics showing our increasing fervour for French fizz.

Australians are now the largest consumers of champagne per head of population outside Europe, and the seventh biggest market overall. In 2020, we spent more than $419m buying alcohol from France, more than double what we spent in 2010, with champagne at the top of the shopping list.

Wine critic Tony Love said vineyards in Tasmania, the Adelaide Hills, the Yarra Valley and the Macedon Ranges were all producing exceptional sparkling wines.

“Now that the best Australian producers have got sometimes decades of back vintage wine to blend, we are starting to see a lot of Australian sparklings with great complexity and depth of flavour, and still amazing freshness. This is why Australian sparklings are becoming more and more respected,” Mr Love said.

But in addition to quality and affordability, the Australian labels have an added boost to their bouquet: they tend to have smaller carbon footprints than their overseas counterparts.

About 2kg of CO2 is produced for every bottle of wine made around the world, whereas the Australian Wine Research Institute estimates it’s about 1.16kg per domestic bottle.

Champagne and sparkling is more carbon-intensive to transport than other types of wine, because of the heavier glass required to contain the pressurised liquid – a factor that becomes more pronounced when you consider France is 16,000km from Australia.

Local winemakers believe this could be a breakthrough season for their product, with shortfalls in supplies of champagne pushing up prices and prompting sales limits.

Executive sommelier at Sydney’s Shangri-la Hotel Matt Herod said selecting wine often came down to the “recognisability of labels”, but when offered a top Australian drop such as Andrew Pirie’s sublime Apogee, diners were often stunned by the quality.

Dan Murphy’s Champagne Category Manager Mat Young advised buyers wanting an Australian sparkling that was “as close as it gets to champagne” to look for the words ‘ Méthode traditionelle’ on the label.

“It’s not a compromise to choose Aussie premium bubbles over champagne anymore; it’s a great and affordable alternative,” Mr Young said.