Can £10 champagne REALLY sparkle?
THE corks are popping, the carols are playing and it even looks like there’s a miracle before our eyes – champagne on sale for a tenner.
Supermarkets across the country are fighting to win the annual battle of the bubbly. Every major chain stocks bottle of the stuff, cunningly adorned with impressive labels despite the remarkably low price.
So, how do you decide which are the greats and which are the duds? There’s only one way – line them up, stick on a blindfold and do a bubbly taste-test. And just to keep me on my toes, it turns out there’s an expensive bottle of Lanson in the room, too.
Before the results, it’s worth examining how the supermarkets come to their prices. For example, Aldi sells Veuve Monsigny champagne for £10.99; Iceland has Charles Montaine for £10; and Lidl undercuts the lot with its own French fizz, Comte de Senneval, coming in at a seemingly impossible £9.97.
How on earth do they do it? Well, it works like this: of the 320 villages in the Champagne region of North East France, only 17 are producing the top Grand Crus, while another 42 are producing Premier Crus. These include the most familiar names – Bollinger, Taittinger or a more affordable Lanson, perhaps.
As far as the rest goes, however, the quality is, to say the least, variable – and that’s where the big stores come in. They offer consumers low prices by spreading their costs and buying vast quantities of fizz from vineyards with lower quality grapes. It’s certainly champagne, but be warned. Though the prices may be appealing, you can sometimes find tastier options by buying French crémant, Spanish cava or, better yet, English fizz. And as for the impressivelooking bottle, the Veuve Monsigny brand might sound rather exclusive, but that’s because it is made exclusively for the Aldi discount chain.
If you’re buying champagne this Christmas, start with the label. ‘Blanc de Blancs’, for example, is only made from white grapes – chardonnay – and will be spot on for an aperitif and as dazzling as plugging your tastebuds into the National Grid.
‘Blanc de Noirs’, on the other hand, is made from red grapes – Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier – and is richer and more powerfully mellow, the Barry White of champagne if you like. Perfect with party nibbles.
‘NV’ is non-vintage, which means the wine is blended from many years to maintain a consistent style.
Prosecco, the cheaper Italian rival, has been a runaway success thanks to its fruitier style and friendly price point. So supermarkets have been working hard to deliver Christmas champagne for comparable prices. But was the effort worth your hard-earned cash? It’s time to put on that blindfold…