Valentine’s Day, that passion-driven pop celebration of love, provides a good excuse to open a bottle of bubbly (whether you’ve found love or are curled up alone at home reading a romance novel). The lively effervescence of sparkling wine lifts the spirits while those little alcohol-infused bubbles jump-start all happy feelings.
One word of advice, for Valentine’s Day or other occasions that call for celebration: don’t say “I’m bringing champagne,” and then show up with cava or prosecco. Just because a wine is fizzy doesn’t mean it’s champagne; only wines from the Champagne region of France, northeast of Paris, may legally be called that (except for a few grandfathered labels on bubblies produced before the law went into effect).
Grown on the chalk skeletons of ancient sea fossils, at the northernmost region where vines can survive and ripen, Champagne has a racy energy and (at best) complexity that is hard to duplicate. You may prefer a softer, fruitier kind of bubbly, but only Champagne is champagne.
Vintage champagnes are produced only in exceptional years (most are non-vintage blends to smooth out the inconsistencies of the region’s ripening), so they are expensive. But if you would consider spending $60 to $200 on theater tickets (and more on dinner and transportation), you could just as easily consider staying home with a vintage champagne instead. Recession era prices have made some great champagnes much more affordable.
At a recent Wine Media Guild tasting of vintage champagnes, I found some of my favorites. Leading the pack was one of the least expensive, the hedonistic 2003 Louis Roederer Brut. With access to the best vineyards, and genius in the cellar, Roederer doesn’t know how to make boring wine. I feel the same way about Pol Roger, whose wines are reliably elegant, sleek, and bracing.
The 2000 Charles Heidsieck Brut is gorgeously sensuous; Ayala’s 2000 Blanc de Blanc is taut and refined, and the Henriot 1995 “Cuvee des Enchanteleurs” showed a tightrope walker’s balance of yeasty minerality.
Outside Champagne, there is a world of other sparkling wines that can make your heart race with pleasure. On the North Fork, in Southold, Cynthia and Tom Rosicki have just opened Sparkling Pointe (www.sparklingpointe.com), a winery that specializes in sparkling wine (“If it’s not sparkling, what’s the pointe?”). Their wines are made in the traditional method by an experienced French winemaker, Gilles Martin; their building is modeled on a French manor house (spectacularly rendered by architect Nancy Steelman)—but the theme at Sparkling Pointe is Brazilian.
This is the triumph of American winemaking: Here, unlike France, where laws and traditions constrain wine producers to fit a mold, the personal style of the winery owners can and does prevail. As Tom Rosicki says, “We fly the American, French, Brazilian, and Sparkling Pointe flags out front—it all applies. France is old world; Brazil is new world. We have old elements but add the fresh, free elements of the new world. We know we’re not France, nor do we want to be—it would be false.”
Sparkling Pointe is an exuberant expression of everything the Rosickis love (including each other). They translated their desire to preserve some farmland on the North Fork (where their families had summered for years), their preference for sparkling wine, and their enchantment with Rio de Janiero (where they dance in the Carnaval parade with a samba school) into a vineyard and winery where all their enthusiasms can be shared by guests.
In its vineyard, Sparkling Pointe has a (human-size) reproduction of Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer), the all-embracing statue overlooking Rio. The statue’s gesture of inclusion, blessing, and protection permeates the place (and this particular Cristo welcomes pleasure, too). Sunlight floods the tasting room, glinting off the crystal chandeliers and the opalesque tiles covering the curved bar in the Bubble room, a vaulted lounge for private parties. Brightly colored paintings by artists discovered by the Rosickis in Brazil add to the party atmosphere.
Sparkling Pointe has released four wines made by Gilles Martin; all are made from chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier grapes sourced locally (and soon, from the Rosicki’s own young vines). Of these, I found the 2005 Topaz Imperial especially appealing. The pinot noir predominates, with a delicious white cherry aroma, and the wine has a creamy mouth feel that integrates all elements. When I said this to Tom, he replied, “Einstein wasn’t able to figure out the unifying principle, but Gilles Martin was.”
Sparkling Pointe will participate in the Long Island Wine Council’s Jazz on the Vine series of concerts, running weekends from February 13 to March 21. These free concerts are part of Long Island Winterfest, a mid-winter promotion organized by the Long Island Wine Council, the East End Arts Council, Suffolk County Department of Economic Development and Workforce Housing, and the Long Island Convention and Visitors Bureau, with additional support from Teatro Experimental Yerbabruja and Steinway Pianos. For more information, visit www.liwinterfest.com.
And yes, there will be a Steinway piano at Sparkling Pointe, making a romantic excursion there for some bubbly all the more pleasurable.
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