- Buying Your Bubbly: When choosing the perfect bottle of sparkling wine, it’s best to talk to the experts. Pay a visit to a winery or wine shop, they will be able to help you chose the best wine as well as have the proper facilities to store it.
- Keeping it Cold: Sparkling wine is best served cold, so the wine will hold its carbonation longer and make your bubbly bubblier. Sparkling wine should never be placed in the freezer. Small crystals can form in the bottle when the wine gets too cold and it will end up with a heavy sediment.
- Don’t Forget the Flute: Mount Pleasant’s experts believe sparkling wine is best served in a long-stemmed flute. The flute enhances the quality of the sparkling wine more than the popular wide rimmed glass, because it is designed to enhance the flow of the bubbles to the crown and concentrate the aromas of the drink.
- Serving Your Sparkler: How you pour a sparkling wine can be just as important as the glass it’s served in. Mount Pleasant Winery starts by wiping the neck of the bottle with clean linen to remove any dirt. Pour about an inch of sparkling wine into each glass and allow the froth in the glass to settle. Top off the glasses until they are two-thirds full.
- Dare to Pair: While sparkling wine is usually served solo before a meal, it also pairs well with many foods at your New Year’s celebration. It is an excellent complement to chocolate as well as fruits and cheeses. Mount Pleasant suggests putting a fresh raspberry in the flute. It not only tastes good after soaking up the wine, but also it helps produce more bubbles in your glass.
If searching for the perfect New Year’s sparkling wine still sounds daunting, Chuck Dressel has some fabulous recommendations from his own cellar.
“Our Brut Imperial is a crisp, dry sparkler and an excellent choice for any wine lover,” Dressel said. “And if you are looking for something sweeter our Mount Pleasant Ten Bucks is a very popular sweet, creamy, carbonated white wine.”