Expert Offers Advice For New Year's Eve Bubbly Beverages
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Happy New Year!
You can't celebrate the New Year without a certain bubbly beverage.
"Big champagne time. Biggest of the year," says David Kuiawa, retail wine specialist for the Pleasant Hills Wine & Spirits Store.
Champagne has been associated with New Year's Eve for centuries, and the unique sparkling wine itself dates back 1,500 years to King Clovis of France.
Most Americans think that all sparkling wines are champagnes, but that's not true.
Only those wines made in a particular region of France can call themselves champagne like Moet & Chandon and the king of champagnes, Dom Perignon.
Dom Perignon, at over $150 a bottle, is pretty pricey, which is why most of us stick to American-made bubbly which is not really a champagne.
"It's technically a sparkling wine," says Kuiawa. "Now in some countries, for example in Italy, we call it a prosecco or a spumante. In Spain, we call it cava, and in other areas, we just call it sparkling wine."
The Pleasant Hills Wine & Spirits Store has hundreds of champagnes and sparkling wines, says Kuiawa.
And here's a tip: bigger bubbles do not mean a better drink.
"If those bubbles, or the term for that is mousse, if the mousse is very fine, then the champagne is a better type of champagne. If the bubbles or the mousse are much larger, then it's a lesser quality of sparkling wine."
And then there's the sweetness where the labels don't always make sense.
"We have spumantes that are very sweet. We have extra drys that are somewhere in the middle, and then we have bruts that are even dryer."
That's right, brut is dryer than extra dry.
Kuiawa says the dryer the wine, the less likely you'll have a hangover.
"I would just look for brut. That means it's dry, or fairly significantly dry, and I think the hangovers will be much less."
Always a good thing|
then we have bruts that are even dryer," Kuiawa said.
Kuiawa said the dryer the wine, the less likely you'll have a hangover.
"I would just look for brut. That means it's dry, or fairly significantly dry, and I think the hangovers will be much less," Kuiawa said.
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