Champagne is a New Years Eve staple. Most people, when they hear the word Champagne, think celebration, and New Years Eve is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, celebrations in the world.
Whether you are a Champagne and/or wine drinker or not, it is always fun to toast the new year with a sip of the bubbly stuff. Lucky for us, there are different kinds to choose from depending on your palate and budget.
What are the different kinds of Champagne?
Champagne, as most of us know, is basically sparkling wine, however, there are different types. There is sweet Champagne and dry Champagne, just like wine. When the bottle claims the Champagne is “Extra-dry,” that obviously means it is dry, however, “Brut” means it is the driest kind of Champagne.
The sweet bottles of Champagne are called “Sec,” which is sweet, and “Demi-Sec,” which is the sweetest.
Picking a dry Champagne or a sweet Champagne can depend on taste, food or price. My father is a wine connoisseur. He has been buying, tasting and testing wine’s since before I was born. We even had a full wine cellar, although it was raw (dug out from the basement with a metal rack put inside,) in our house growing up.
Suggestions from my father: Sweet wine and Champagne, according to my father, go with cheeses, red meat and saltier fair. Dry wine and Champagne are better paired with desserts, fruits and sweeter dishes like a chicken dish with a sweet sauce.
Buying Champagne
When my husband and I went on our honeymoon in Nantucket years ago, we decided to over-splurge one night on dinner. We’d heard a particular restaurant was worth it, and it was, so we even splurged on the Champagne we ordered to toast ourselves. Each glass, however, was $25. We picked out what was considered an expensive Champagne, and it was certainly delicious, however, that price is steep. You can get a great Champagne at $25 for the entire bottle. You just have to know how to pick it.
There are many brands, Korbel, Taittinger , Veuve (with that familiar yellow label,), Dom Perignon, Freixenet and many more that we have seen at liquor stores or heard about from commercials or magazine ads. If you are having guests who know nothing about wine or Champagne and are only going to have a sip at midnight, then it’s okay to go with a Spumante (which you can get for $6) or Freixenet.
If you care about the taste however, do some research. Dom Perignon is high end, and yes, delicious no matter what type you pick, but a bottle can run you $100 and up. If you have that sort of cash and want to spend it, great, you are very fortunate.
Taittinger has been rated in wine magazines and they have bottles, both dry and sweet, that start at $23. A nice pick for a dinner party or New Years Eve.
Veuve is very popular, however they also have great prices (like Taittinger) and many fantastic tastes to choose from. This brand is a great option for a large party on New Years Eve.