Similar to the Hacienda Brut and the Domaine Laurier Brut that we reviewed earlier this week, the Pol Rémy Brut comes from the Bronco Wine Company portfolio.  But one thing that’s different about it is that it’s from France.  I don’t know if the brand is owned by Bronco or just imported, but it is part of their portfolio.

In addition to being French, another thing that’s different about this wine is what’s in it.  It’s made from 60% Aïren, 20% Ugni Blanc and 20% Colombard grapes.  Which may not be grapes you’re tasting every day.

This wine doesn’t offer much on the nose, except light apple aromas and, if you really dig for it, some very faint yeast aromas.  The palate offers a nice, bubbly mouth feel with tart, granny smith apple flavors, as well as some fresh-squeezed lime (as I said, it’s tart) and a touch of mineral, particularly on the finish.  It has a hint of bitterness on the finish too.  It’s nothing fancy, but it’s acceptable for the price.

Wine: Pol Rémy
Variety: Brut
Vintage: Non-vintage
Alcohol: 11%
Rating: 83
Price: $10.99

Find Pol Rémy Brut with Snooth

Disclosure: This wine was received as a sample.

Just because the New Year’s holiday is over is no reason to stop drinking sparkling wine.  And so, here are a couple more bubblies worth checking out.

Both of these wines come from the Bronco Wine Company.  You won’t see that name on the labels anywhere, but Bronco owns both of these brands, as well as numerous other “value” wine brands.  Bronco is probably best known as the company that produces the Charles Shaw brand (aka “Two-buck Chuck”) sold at Trader Joe’s.  While these wines are quite as cheap as two-buck, they are still quite reasonably priced, particularly for bubbly.

There is one thing you might not like about these wines.  If you’ve ever paid $30 or more for a bottle of bubbly, you may feel foolish after tasting one of these.

Hacienda Brut

The nose is a little on the tight side, but shows some yeast, straw and apple aromas.  The palate has a creamy and bubbly mouth feel and offers apple, pear, lime and mineral flavors.  It has a very harmonious balance of texture, fruit, acid and mineral.  I honestly didn’t expect this wine to be this good, but I’m glad that it is.

Wine: Hacienda Brut
Variety: White Blend
Vintage: N/V
Alcohol: 12%
Rating: 87
Price: $12.99

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Domaine Laurier Brut

Interestingly, we reviewed this wine two years ago and didn’t have a good impression of it at the time.  That just goes to show that even though this wine is labeled as a non-vintage wine, it will still show differently from one year to the next.

This wine has smoky yeast and apple aromas.  A wine like this would not see any oak, so I would think that the smoke is just an expression of the yeast.  The palate has tart, green apple, lime and straw flavors with plenty of bubble and a creamy texture.  A salty mineral note hits the midpalate and continues into the finish, where the green apple also lingers. For the price of this bubbly, I have zero complaints.

Wine: Domaine Laurier Brut
Variety: White Blend
Vintage: N/V
Alcohol: 11.5%
Rating: 87
Price: $12.99

Find Domaine Laurier Brut with Snooth

Disclosure: These wines were received as a sample.

Tonight we’re continuing our pre-New Year’s Eve exploration of sparkling wines with a double-header review of  crémant from Lucien Albrecht.

For those of you who don’t know, crémant is a name for French sparkling wine that’s not from Champagne.  And there’s something I just like about the name, particularly when it’s crémant d’Alsace.  That’s just fun to say.  And while we’re getting everyone on the same page, if you don’t know Alsace, that’s a wine region in the eastern part of France, along the German border.  Alsace is known for producing exceptional white wines, and this crémant is among that exceptionality.  (I know that’s not really a word… I just don’t care.)

Lucien Albrecht Crémant D’Alsace Brut Blanc de Blancs

We actually reviewed this wine a couple years ago, and although it’s a non-vintage wine we thought it would be worth a revisit.  Even though a wine is labeled as non-vintage, it would be impossible for it to not have some differences from one year to the next.  After all, each year will bring a new batch of grapes, each influenced by different weather and yielding different nuances.  So here’s what we think of it now.

The fragrance on the nose is soft, but pleasant with a nice blend of yeast, citrus and apple aromas.  The palate is dry and filled with bubbles.  It offers flavors of yeast (think fresh bread), lemon and apples.  The finish is fairly long and evolves.  It starts out with the flavor of salted apples, but evolves into the flavors of yeast and cane sugar.  It doesn’t have the sweetness of sugar, but the flavor lingering on my tongue reminds me of white sugar.  Some might interpret that as a bad thing and I’d agree if it were too intense, but it’s not… it’s just a nuance and it’s kind of interesting.  This would be really good with salty cheeses or meats.  All told, this is a nice bottle of bubbly.

Wine: Lucien Albrecht Cremant D’Alsace Brut Blanc de Blancs
Variety: Pinot Blanc
Vintage: N/V
Alcohol: 12%
Rating: 87
Price: $19.99

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Lucien Albrecht Crémant D’Alsace Brut Rosé

As a pink wine, this is one many guys might avoid because it threatens their masculinity.  But don’t fear the pink wine.  It’s awesome!  And you can still be a manly man, even if you drink pink sparkling wine.  Yes, I watch UFC fights, use power tools, listen to Black Sabbath, lift weights, play video games and I drink pink, sparkling wine… and I’m OK with that!  In fact, I can’t wait to drink more of this one, because it is awesome.

And, Mr.-tough-guy-who’s-too-cool-for-pink-wine, you probably drink pinot noir and think that it’s cool.  Well, I have news for you.  This wine is 100% pinot noir.

The nose of this bubbly shows yeast, lime and mineral with moderate intensity.  The palate is quite refreshing, offering crisp apple, cranberry and lime flavors with a nice feel to the bubbles.  You might think of it as a cranberry-apple spritz with a slice of lime.  This is a brut, so it is dry, not sweet.  I probably didn’t do justice with my description on this one as this is a very nice bottle of bubbly!

Don’t let the price scare you on this one either.  While the suggested retail price is $19.99, I’ve seen it for sale as low as $12.00.

Wine: Lucien Albrecht Cremant D’Alsace Brut Rosé
Variety: Pinot Noir
Vintage: N/V
Alcohol: 12%
Rating: 89
Price: $19.99

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Disclosure: These wines were received as a sample.

Yellow Tail, or [yellow tail] as they write it, is one of those brands that many people view as the epitome of cheap wine.  In fact, when I tell people about this website I’m often asked if I drink a bunch of Yellow Tail.  Actually, I don’t.  This is the first time we’ve reviewed a Yellow Tail wine.  It’s not out of spite for the brand or anything like that, there’s just sooooo many different wines out there to choose from that we haven’t gotten around to a [yellow tail]… until now.

I have to admit, that Australia isn’t on the top of my list when I’m shopping for sparklers.  With so much good Italian Prosecco, Spanish Cava, Alsatian Cremant and Californian bubbly out there, I’m just not that likely to make it to the Australian section.  But why not?  They make some great wine in Australia!  They can probably make some great bubbly too.

This one has a fairly tight nose, with slight apple aromas.  The palate is off-dry with slightly sweet yellow delicious apple flavors.  It’s fairly simple, but it’s pleasant tasting.  The bubbles in this wine feel like those from a soda.  The bubbles might come from a gas injection method versus the traditional fermentation in the bottle method.  I could not find any statement about their method anywhere in their literature, so I don’t know for sure.  Regardless of whatever method they used, it has some bubbles but the texture of those bubbles isn’t quite cutting it for me.  It finishes with more apple flavor and a touch of lemon.  While I wouldn’t say this wine totally knocked my socks off, it was still enjoyable and a bargain for the price.

One thing that I did love about this wine is the cap.  It came with a resealable, plastic cap.  This allows you to cap the wine if you don’t want to drink the whole bottle in one evening.  And the cap will fit most other sparkling wine bottles too, so you can keep it and use it over and over with other bottles of bubbly.

Wine: Yellow Tail
Variety: Sparkling wine
Vintage: Non-vintage
Alcohol: 11.5%
Rating: 84
Price: $10.00

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Want another opinion?  Here’s what some other’s thought of [yellow tail] Bubbles:

• First Pour Wine
• Twilight Wines
• Detroit News

Disclosure: This wine was received as a sample.

Holiday season is upon us and it’s the time of year when many people have some sparkling wine, although you really can and should enjoy it year round.  Nonetheless, since I know many of you are looking for some good, cheap bubbles these days I thought we should do some reviews to help you out.

One of my favorite budget-friendly sparklers is Prosecco.  When it comes to bang for your buck — or bubbles for your buck, in this case — it’s hard to beat Prosecco.  Like many Italian wines, the name is as much about the style of wine as it is about where the wine was made.  Prosecco comes from either the Veneto region or the Friuli–Venezia Giulia region, both in north-eastern Italy.  This one is from Veneto.  The grapes in this are also called prosecco, although they are sometimes called, glera.

This Prosecco is made by Casa Vinicola Zonin, a producer with vineyards throughout Italy.

Apple and pear aromas with a twist of citrus give this wine the aromas I’d expect from a Prosecco.  The palate shows a lot of mineral, with a prominent salty characteristic.  It also shows shows quite a bit of apple flavor, so I guess you might say it tastes like salted apples.  Although it has some apple flavor, it doesn’t have the sweetness of apples, rather it’s quite dry.  You can taste a little bit of yeast on the mid-palate, which adds a nice touch of complexity.  It finishes with mineral, apple and a little bit of lemon flavor.  This is a relatively simple Prosecco, but tasty and quite a bargain.

Wine: Zonin
Variety: Prosecco
Vintage: Non-vintage
Alcohol: 11%
Rating: 86
Price: $12.00

Find Zonin Prosecco with Snooth

Disclosure: This wine was received as a sample.

Today I am at the 2011 North American Wine Bloggers Conference in Charlottesville, Virginia. And you may be asking yourself, “Why the hell is there a wine bloggers conference in Virginia?” Well, there is actually some very tasty wine made here… it doesn’t all come from California. I haven’t had a chance to taste much Virginian wine yet, but I’ve had some. In fact, this morning I tasted Virginian viognier, cabernet franc and even a nebbiolo that were really nice, all from Barboursville Winery. And we’re about to taste more wine from Virginia and other regions.

Live blogging at these conferences is like a speed dating version of wine tasting. A producer comes to our table and gives us a sample of their wine, tells us about it and we can write about it, all within a couple minutes. It’s really fast. This is my third year doing it and the first year I took it really seriously and tried to get detailed notes on all the wines, but now I know better and I just have fun with it. I’ll highlight a couple wines that stand out.

We are actually doing two live blogging sessions, one today and one tomorrow. The one today is all white, rose’ and sparkling wines.

So far we’ve already had a couple sessions. Jancis Robinson gave the keynote to get the event rolling, and she had great advice for aspiring wine writers, as one would expect from her. Here’s a picture of the scene for that.

After that, I attended a session on aromas in wine wherein we practiced our craft of detecting aromas in wine with six wines and a tray full of comparative aromas. This is always a fun exercise and something you can’t practice too much, if you want to better your wine assessment abilities. Here’s a picture of the aroma tray.

Alright… so bring on the live blogging! I’ll be updating this post as the tasting goes on.

First up, is wine from Texas! WTF?! It’s the 2009 Viviana from Llano Estacado Winery, which is mad from a blend of gewurztraminer, riesling, viognier and muscat canelli. It’s very aromatic with a touch of honey, lychee and herbal aromatics. It smells like it would be sweet, but it is a dry wine. The flavor profile is focused on citrus. It’s crisp and refreshing and much better than you’d expect from a hot, dry place like Texas. Nice job! The suggested retail price is $22.95.

The next wine is a rose’. (Note: I’m typing this on my iPad and it takes too long to dig out the special character for the ‘ over the e). This wine is from Chateau Morrisette. It has a nice delicate, lime and mineral aroma. The flavors bring a hint of strawberry, but it’s dry not sweet, along with apple and citrus. This one is from Virginia. It’s another nice wine.

Next up is the Boxwood Estate Rose’ which is made from juice pulled off from their red wines. This one is another lime and mineral story on the nose. In the mouth it’s a touch of apricot, a touch of pear and a touch of citrus. Nothing too intense. This one comes from Middleburg, Virginia.

Back to the white wines, this is a viognier from Baboursville Vineyards. I actually tasted this wine earlier today and it’s a really nice one. Viognier does very nicely in the Virginia area. This is a nice aromatic wine with good floral characteristics as well as some citrus. On the palate, it’s very citrusy. Sometimes viognier can be a bit oily in mouthfeel and sometimes a bit more crisp, this one is on the crisp side. It’s great. I love it!

Tabarrini Adarmando is the next wine, and it’s Italian. So, we’re leaving the country now. This is a deep golden color. It has a nice deep aroma with notes of petrol and hay and other herbal aromatics. The palate brings some cooked pear flavors and citrus, with nice intensity. It’s a fun wine.

Now we’re coming back to Virginia for another viognier from Michael Shaps. The aromas are floral in nature (of course) and I’d say, lanolin. The palate has a really nice crispness with great acidity and citrus flavors. This particular wine comes from a bottle, but the producer says they are also doing a bag-in-box wine that retails for the equivalent of $7.50 a bottle! I can say that the one from this bottle is great. I’d like to try the one in the box too.

Jefferson Vineyards brings the next wine, a Pinot Gris. It’s grown on land that was at one time owned by Thomas Jefferson. It smells nice a crisp with lime aromas, and it tastes crisp too, with lime and mineral flavors. It retails for $18.95.

OK, so we’re tasting some California wine while we’re here. This is a sauvignon blanc from Sivas-Sonoma, which is part of the Sabastiani family. This is a nice, grassy and grapefruit smelling sauvignon blanc which has outstanding aromatics. The palate is grapefruit, apple and mineral. It’s very nice. Much better than many Californian sauvignon blanks that I’ve tasted.

The next wine is from Maycas, and it’s a chardonnay from the Limari region in Chile. This is an oaken chardonnay, in French oak. It’s a very crisp chardonnay, with nice citrus flavors making it apparent that it didn’t undergo malolactic fermentation. A+

Coming back to Virginia, the next wine is the 2010 Verdejo from Keswick Vineyards – which is the only Virginian verdejo you can buy. It’s a delicate wine on the nose, with soft citrus aromas. On the palate, it’s crisp with delicate citrus and mineral flavors.

Tarara Winery in Leesburg presented the next wine, which is a blend of chardonnay and viognier. This vineyard is right off the Potomac River and they try to show that terroir in this wine. It has very herbal aroma. The acidity in this wine is bright. There’s an herbal flavor in this wine too. It’s a big angular, but distinctive and interesting.

The final wine of this tasting is from The Williamsburg Winery, and it’s their 2009 Chardonnay. It’s a burgundian-style chardonnay made with a combination of stainless steel and oak fermentation. The oak aromas are light, definitely not overdone. The palate is approachable and had a nice balance of fruit and earthy flavors. It retails for $14, which is a great deal for this wine. It’s a nice one and a great food wine.

And that’s all for this tasting. Cheers!

Although the label of this wine says that it’s a nerello mascalese, that’s not the only grape that’s in here.  There’s also prosecco in this wine and I really think of it as a rosé prosecco because nerello mascalese is primarily used for color.  The nerello mascalese grapes in this wine come from Sambuca, Sicily while the prosecco comes from the Veneto region in northern Italy.

To be honest, I don’t taste a lot of rosé wines.  It’s not that I’m too manly to drink pink, in fact I really like a good rosé every now and then.  It’s just that there are so many options when it comes to wine that rosé often doesn’t make it to the top of that list.  But still, I was excited to try this wine.

The nose is pretty tight, not giving much intensity to the aromas.  But there is some apple and a slight floral frangrance to it.  The palate also suffers from some over-subtlety.  It offers soft apple and pear flavors with a bit of yeast and salt on the finish.  There aren’t any off flavors, so I wouldn’t say it’s a bad wine it’s just that it’s such a subtle wine that it doesn’t have much wow effect.  If you prefer a more delicate bubbly, you may enjoy this one.  But for me, it was just “meh.”

Wine: Valdo Nerello Mascalese
Variety: Nerello Mascalese & Prosecco
Vintage: Non-vintage
Alcohol: 12%
Rating: 83
Price: $13.00

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Disclosure: This wine was received as a sample.

Tonight we’re checking out an inexpensive, yet tasty, prosecco from Villa Sandi.  When I hear a name like Villa Sandi, I often assume that it’s just some name given to the wine that the producers thought would sound elegant.  But in this case, there is a real villa where the company is headquartered, and it dates back to 1622.  By looking at pictures of it, it’s quite impressive and looks like a fabulous place to visit.  An image of it also made its way onto the labels of their wines.

Like many wine producers, Villa Sandi produces a wide selection of different wines.  In the case of Villa Sandi, they produce both still and sparkling wines – including a number of different proseccos.  The Il Fresco is their entry-level prosecco.

This is a beautifully vibrant prosecco on the nose, with well balanced aromas of yeast, apple and mineral.  The palate is equally well-ballanced with apple, citrus, melon and mineral.  The acidity is perfect.  It finishes very clean – no lingering sweet flavors, but just a bit of citrus and mineral. This is a good prosecco, and for the price it’s outstanding!

Wine: Villa Sandi Il Fresco Prosecco
Variety: Prosecco
Vintage: Non-vintage
Alcohol: 11%
Rating: 87
Price: $12.99

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Disclosure: This wine was received as a sample.

Yesterday, we reviewed a Prosecco — which is a great sparkling wine option when it comes to QPR.  Another good option is Cava, which is a sparkling wine from Spain.  Traditionally Cava just referred to a particular style of Spanish sparkling wine, but since 1986 it also means that wine is produced in a specific areas designated as DO Cava.

This Cava from Marques de Gelida uses the traditional Cava grape varieties of Macaubo, Xarel-lo, and Parellada, plus some Chardonnay is in the blend.  As a “reserva” it was aged three years before being released.

The color of this cava is a deep straw, showing just a touch of age—which is what it has.  The nose of this wine shows a touch of age too, with a butterscotch aroma layered over yeast and apple.  The aromas are fairly powerful too.  The palate offers crisp acidity with apple and plenty of yeast flavors.  It finishes with a citrus acidity, butterscotch and more yeast.  This is a nice bottle of bubbly.

Wine: Marques de Gelida Brut Exclusive Reserva
Variety: Cava
Vintage: 2006
Alcohol: 11.5%
Rating: 88
Price: $16.99

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In general, I’m a big fan of prosecco.  When it comes to sparkling wine, I think you get more bang for your buck with prosecco than pretty much any other option.  And this is a great example of that.  Although the suggested retail price is $14, I’ve seen this wine for sale at a super-bargain price of only $10.  And given how much I like this bubbly, that’s an outstanding QPR!

Valdo was started in 1926 by the Societa Anonima Vini Superiori and was purchased by The Bolla Family in the 1940’s.  The vineyards are in Valdobbiadene, a town in the province of Treviso, Veneto, Italy.

This wine is a “brut” but it’s at the upper limit of sweetness for that classification with 12 grams of residual sugar per liter.  That’s not to say that it’s a sweet wine, it’s not. But is sugar level is high enough to border on the “extra dry” classification. In fact, they could have used that classification if they had wanted to do so.

The nose is delicate, but it shows pear and yellow delicious apple aromas.  There’s also a light, flowery perfume.  The yeast is noticeable, but subtle.  The palate has a nice pear flavor up front, accompanied by a less prominent apple flavor.  The mid-palate brings crisp acidity and some yeast flavor, which carries into the finish along with pear and mineral flavors.

Wine: Valdo
Variety: Prosecco
Vintage: Non-vintage
Alcohol: 11%
Rating: 88
Price: $13.99

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Disclosure: This wine was received as a sample.