Chandon Brut Sparkling Wine

Happy New Year and we hope you have a wonderful evening with family and friends, and to cherish all moments of it. We started off with the Chandon Brut Sparkling wine to have with some Lindt chocolate while we were waiting around to start having a "dinner" of some sort. This is a sparkling wine made in California and more specifically in the Napa Valley region. During the production process it is aged during the second fermentation for approximately 12 months on the lees. Once this process is complete the bottles are riddled, disgorged, sealed with a cork and age for a minimum of 3 months again before it is sent out for consumers. This is all in line with being made by the traditional method that is used for Champagne that we know from France. It is just not aged as long as Champagne or in the chalky soil and vast underground tunnel network.

The first part of opening this bottle I actually did what I thought was my best at opening the bottle and not having a big burst of pressure release or shooting the cork across the room and losing some of the crisp wine. It was a slight release of pressure with a hiss although there was a good bit of pressure in the bottle. I also joked about using a champagne saber but no one had one. I still would like to try it one day, so let me know it you have one for me to try. I am still trying to work on my sommelier skills.

After pouring the bottle into some champagne flutes it was a wonderful color of a light amber that resembled a water down apple juice or similar to a hard apple cider. It had small crisp bubbles appearing on the side of the glass but wasn't plentiful or super tiny. it was similar to pouring a soda in a glass and watching the carbonation bubbles float to the top, just smaller bubbles.

On the nose it reminded me of a light Riesling from Germany with the green apple and floral notes. It wasn't as much but it was still good. Overall it was very light on the nose and wasn't over powering but that is in line with this style of wine.

With the taste, it definitely lived up to being a Brut with the bit of dryness associated with it. Once it started to open up a bit it mellowed out slightly to be more appealing to some of our tasters. It wasn't a harsh brut at all. It came with a bit of a green apple and grapefruit taste on the front end. It did open up to a bit of a lemon towards the end of it as well.

This was a wonderful choice to start the evening with a sparkling wine and pairing with some Lindt chocolate from the factory in Switzerland along with some other hors d'oeuvres. The white chocolate was the best pairing with it and wished we had some more with it.

Overall we would get this bottle again and would recommend it to others as long as they don't mind a bit of dryness to their sparkling wine. We thought it was rated decently on Vivino, which states it is a 3.6 rating but we would have put it as a 3.4. If you have drank this sparkling wine then let us know what your thoughts on it is.