Last Minute Sparkling Wine Advice from The Second Glass

Bostonist doesn't have the clearest idea of our readership, but we do imagine that there are a few of you who wait for the last minute to make important decisions. And, if you are like us, you have one more important decision to make before the year ends: which sparkling wine to uncork at midnight tonight.

Our decision was helped by our friends at The Second Glass magazine, who invited us to their Crash Course seminar on sparkling wine for New Year's. The event was a blind tasting; seven sparklers were served from brown paper bags, Boston Common style, so that participants didn't know which wine they were drinking. It proved a point that became a theme of the tasting: price and prestige don't always mean great tasting wine.

The tasting included wines like Veuve Clicquot, the venerable French Champagne that retails for more than $50 a bottle. But our unlikely favorite was the Segura Viudas cava, a Spanish sparkler made in the traditional Champagne style but using different grapes. The Segura goes for a modest $9 a bottle, but had a singing sharpness that we particularly enjoyed. And it was gratifying to learn that we retained our college-aged capacity to sniff out a bargain.

The cava wasn't for everybody, however, and it ranked sixth out of seven in the attendee balloting. Happily, the most popular wine of the night was also a bargain. Louis Bouillot Cremant de Bourgogne is a French sparkler from the Bourgogne region. It can't officially be called a Champagne, but its French label should fool your less discriminating friends, and the taste is spot on. For $18 a bottle, it beats Veuve Clicquot like a Phil Kessel wrist shot, and it would be our pick for a pleasing a crowd on the cheap.

Don't like these suggestions? The Second Glass has a clutch of additional ideas to suit your wine temperament. And don't worry about the Champagne headache. According to Jeff Golden, the wine buyer for Downtown Spirits in Somerville, it's a myth. The carbonation will get you drunk faster, but there's nothing in sparkling wine that should give you a headache other than alcohol. "I'll hear people say that they got a headache drinking red wine because they have a sulfite allergy," said Golden. "If you have a sulfite allergy, one glass of red wine and you'd be dead."