Sparkling

Champagne is sparkling wine royalty in terms of prestige, price and rarity, and is usually made from one, two or all three grape varieties. The white Chardonnay is used for elegance and acidity, the red Pinot Noir is used for body and longevity and the other red, Pinot Meunier, is used for vigour.

Normally a Champagne house's best-selling wine will be its cheapest one, which is usually the Brut NV, this is a critical wine in showing the Champagne 'style' of a house (whether that's rich and toasty, light & floral etc) and is often made from all three varieties. That said, a 100% Chardonnay Champagne is called Blanc de Blancs, and when it's from either or both red grapes it's called a Blancs de Noirs.

Many other regions in France also make sparkling wine, very often this is categorised Crémant. Crémant wines are made from typical grapes to the region and are under the radar of many people, even though they can offer brilliant value for money.

In Italy, Prosecco is the most popular sparkling wine. Coming from the north of the country, it's a crown-pleasing, aromatic wine and often thought of as quite girly, thanks to its pretty pear drop characters. Italy also makes sparkling wine called Frizzante, which is just an indication that a wine has a lighter level of fizziness compared with a full-blown sparkling wine like Prosecco.

Cava is Spain's answer to a quality sparkling wine. White Cava is usually packed with toasty baked apple flavours, which comes from the wine's native grapes Parellada, Xarell-lo and Macabeo. However, Champagne grapes are increasingly starting to eke into Cava production, in an effort to raise its quality level even higher.  

New world countries like New Zealand and Australia are sources of brilliant value-for-money, fruity sparkling wines these days, where it's made in the cooler parts of the countries so that the wine keeps its (necessarily) high acidity. Typically this will be made from grapes like Chardonnay and Pinot Noir giving the wines the best possible chance of being a high quality sparkling wine.