Sparkling Wine VALUES to Buy Now

In this video, I'll taste and evaluate two value price sparkling wines from Trader Joe's. I'm in search of good options for the upcoming holidays. Both are sourced from the cool vineyard sites of the North Coast ABA of California, and both are made by the traditional method, the process used in all of the world's great sparkling wines. Let's see what these can deliver for a modest price of $9.99. Both wines arrived to TJ's in November of 2024. They're both seasonal offerings, but they should see good availability through the holidays, but that can vary by market. The first wine up is the Trader Joe's Reserve North Coast Brut. North Coast is a broad ABA that covers six grape growing counties north of San Francisco, including Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino. It's made from a blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Pinot Blanc. So for starters, make sure the bottle is well chilled. And most bottles will have a pull tab, sometimes a perforated tab as this one has. Around you go, and that is discarded. At this point, turn the bottle at a 45 degree angle. Keep it pointed away from yourself, from others, your cat on the bookshelf. At this point, I'm going to open the wire wrap. Always keep your thumb firmly over the top. There's a lot of pressure here, and if it releases unexpectedly, it's going to launch. If you don't want to use your thumb, you can also use a dish towel as well. Now at this point, the hood has been released. And what I'm going to do is turn the bottle, not the cork, and make this a slow gentle turn. And at this point, as I mentioned, slow gentle turn. I can feel the cork is starting to release. And I want this to be a fairly gentle release. And we're set to pour. This has the look of a youthful sparkling wine. The color is pale yellow. There's a good amount of fizz with a fine persistent bead, along with a good level of mousse. So we're off to a good start. You can see this cork looks exactly as it should. It's mushroomed out. This is just how a sparkling wine cork should function. This has done its job. Now in terms of the sparkling, you can see that the Non-Vintage Brut has a nice steady beam of bubbles. They're small bubbles. Really looks great. And the aroma, really pleasant. There is this green apple citrus characteristic. Very vibrant, lifted. As a side note, when you're drinking sparkling wine, it's always best not to give it a good swirl. There's really no need to. The bubbles will lift the aroma right out of the glass. And if you give this a good swirl, it's just going to go flat. So no need to do that. But the aroma on this is very appealing. It's bright, fresh, very lively. It has that citrus character. And it's a little bit of something here that's reminiscent of roasted almond. Now, it does not have that very broad, autolytic character. And that's often attributed to time on the leaf or the wine resting on those spent yeast cells. The wine will develop kind of a bread dough or brioche sort of character. You'll find this in many champagnes and a lot of very top-end sparkling wines from various places around the world. This has just a very subtle touch of that. My feeling is this wine is probably spent maybe a year, year and a half on the leaf, but it's not been an extended time. But it really does smell good. On the palate, medium body, very fresh, bright, good acidity. And that good acidity is key with sparkling wine. This has that. Really lively and fresh, clean, bright. There's a lot of precision on the palate. Decent length on the back palate. The wine has some good length to it. I mean, all things considered, this is really, really quite outstanding for $10. And if you think of other wines that you can find in this price range, most of them will be what is called made by the bulk Charmat process. This is a very inexpensive way of making sparkling wine. Prosecco is made this way. This has much more complexity to it. There's much more range in this wine that you'll find in many of those. I would say this is comparable to a solid style of Cava. It really does show well. There's just a lot to like. I think this wine is an absolute crowd pleaser. For $10, it's a crazy good deal. Absolutely love it. There's a lot of fun in this wine. I think a broad audience would just absolutely love it. The companion to the first wine is Trader Joe's Reserve North Coast Fruit Rosé. It's made from the same grape varieties as the previous wine. The traditional method, or method Champenois, indicates a wine that's second fermentation takes place in bottle. This is a distinguishing characteristic from cheaper sparkling wine production methods. As with the first wine, there's a good amount of fizz. The bubbles are small with a persistent bead. There's also a very good level of mousse at the surface of the glass. Now with the Rosé, the color is derived through a short maceration time. There's two red grape varieties used in this wine, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Just a short amount of skin contact will give you this pinkish color. Now in terms of the aroma, very different than the previous wine. This is much more of that red fruit character. Much more of a cherry, strawberry note to it. That citrus note is not there. But good intensity, nice purity. It smells very inviting. Very different on the palate as well. This is rounder, weightier, fuller than the previous wine. The impression is it has a bit less acidity, but it's still very bright and fresh. Keep in mind both of these are fermented dry, so there is minimal sweetness in both. The first wine being much more of that citrus, bright green apple characteristic. This one being more red fruit, riper and weightier. Now for me, my preference is wine one. And that's just my preference. If you do like more of a rounder, weightier style, perhaps the Rosé would be more to your liking. But again, my feeling is for the money. These are really outstanding. They deliver a lot when you compare it to light priced wines in the marketplace. I think these very much do over deliver. I'm impressed with both. And I believe these are both going to be available through Trader Joe's over the next few months. They're great for the holiday season. They really are wines that are going to appeal to a very broad audience. And I think they're really solid. Now in terms of keeping an open bottle, there's a couple of different stoppers that are commonly found. This one I absolutely love. And I picked this up at some champagne house, Montedong. I picked this up some years ago. This works great. And when you clamp this down, it actually expands, forms a nice seal on the inside of the bottle. This works great. It works best if the bottle is half full or more. That way it does build up enough pressure and it'll seal just fine. This is another one that's found commonly on the marketplace. And I'm not a fan of this. With this one, I think it just does not form a very nice airtight seal. If you have a stopper that you use that you feel is absolutely outstanding, please comment down below. I'd love to hear from you. So going into making this video, I thought to myself, how good could $10 sparkling wines be? Well, there's a couple of things that are playing to its advantage. One is it's method Champanois. Two, it's from cooler growing regions in Northern California. Those two things should help. And I've got to say, there was a chance that these could have been the iceberg lettuce of the wine world. It's not the case at all. They're actually very well made. They over deliver for the money. I think these are just really solid wines for the cash. Now, if you've not yet subscribed to my channel, please consider doing so. Hit that like button. Definitely hit that notification bell. If you have any like-minded wine friends, please share this video. It helps to grow my channel. As for me, I'll be drinking a little sparkling wine tonight. I hope you're drinking something interesting as well. I hope you stop back again before too long. Cheers.