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Sale
Sparkling
750ml
Bottle: $37.80 $42.00
Rated 94 - Aromas are elegantly layered with bread yeast, roses, and raspberries. Flavors echo the aromas with tart...
UBC
94
Sale
Sparkling
750ml
Bottle: $26.77 $29.75
12 bottles: $18.81
Rated 88 - Fresh and lively, with appealing lemon and strawberry flavors that finish on a steely note. Drink now....
WS
88
Sale
Sparkling
750ml
Bottle: $26.77 $29.75
12 bottles: $19.57
Sale
Sparkling
750ml
Bottle: $21.96 $24.40
12 bottles: $19.76
Rated 90 - This delightful, domestic sparkler is teaming with aromas of fresh orchard fruits and chalky, mineral...
WS
90
UBC
90
Sale
Sparkling
750ml
Bottle: $23.18 $24.40
12 bottles: $19.76
Rated 91 - Crisp and vibrant, with boldly expressive cherry, toasty, yeast and graham cracker flavors that finish on...
WS
91
Sparkling
750ml
Bottle: $33.20
6 bottles: $32.54
The name is as curious and fun as the wine it describes. Hungarian for sparkling wine, Pezsgo (pej-guh) nods to our...
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Champagne Blend United States California Carneros

The sparkling wines of Champagne have been revered by wine drinkers for hundreds of years, and even today they maintain their reputation for excellence of flavor and character, and are consistently associated with quality, decadence, and a cause for celebration. Their unique characteristics are partly due to the careful blending of a small number of selected grape varietals, most commonly Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. These grapes, blended in fairly equal quantities, give the wines of Champagne their wonderful flavors and aromas, with the Pinot Noir offering length and backbone, and the Chardonnay varietal giving its acidity and dry, biscuity nature. It isn't unusual to sometimes see Champagne labeled as 'blanc de blanc', meaning it is made using only Chardonnay varietal grapes, or 'blanc de noir', which is made solely with Pinot Noir.

Of all the New World wine countries, perhaps the one which has demonstrated the most flair for producing high quality wines - using a combination of traditional and forward-thinking contemporary methods - has been the United States of America. For the past couple of centuries, the United States has set about transforming much of its suitable land into vast vineyards, capable of supporting a wide variety of world-class grape varietals which thrive on both the Atlantic and the Pacific coastlines. Of course, we immediately think of sun-drenched California in regards to American wines, with its enormous vineyards responsible for the New World's finest examples of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot based wines, but many other states have taken to viticulture in a big way, with impressive results. Oregon, Washington State and New York have all developed sophisticated and technologically advanced wine cultures of their own, and the output of U.S wineries is increasing each year as more and more people are converted to their produce.

California as a wine producing region has grown in size and importance considerably over the past couple of centuries, and today is the proud producer of more than ninety percent of the United States' wines. Indeed, if California was a country, it would be the fourth largest producer of wine in the world, with a vast range of vineyards covering almost half a million acres. The secret to California's success as a wine region has a lot to do with the high quality of its soils, and the fact that it has an extensive Pacific coastline which perfectly tempers the blazing sunshine it experiences all year round. The winds coming off the ocean cool the vines, and the natural valleys and mountainsides which make up most of the state's wine regions make for ideal areas in which to cultivate a variety of high quality grapes.

Carneros is one of California's key wine producing regions, situated close to the Pacific coast. Although Carneros is relatively young, having been first used for viticulture in the 1940's, it has proven to be a highly successful region, capable of growing high quality grapes and producing wines of real character and distinction. Unlike many other regions of California, Carneros is considerably cooler, and benefits from the tempering effect of Pacific fog on the vineyards. As a direct result of this, Carneros wineries are able to produce fine grape varietals which require cooler temperatures, such as Chardonnay and Pinot Noir – grapes perfect for the sparkling wines the region has become famous for. However, plenty of still red and white wines are made in the region, from a wide array of grape varietals.