Lidl’s £4.99 sparkling wine is perfect for Christmas (Picture: Icy Macload)
Now we’re hurtling towards Christmas, we’re being bombarded by articles about bargain fizz being better than others five time the price. Mainly written by me, it has to be said.
Trust me though, when I tell you that I tasted a sparkling at a recent supermarket wine tasting that you’re going to die for. Or at least you’ll pass out and require resuscitation, in a good way. It’s from Lidl, and although it can’t compete with Champagne on quality, it’s a keeper to have in your fridge over the Christmas period.
The fizz in question is called Vivacello Sparkling, a carbonated Spanish sparkling wine that has delectable flavours of peach, apricot and lively tangerine, plus it’s lower in alcohol at 10.5%. The bubbles aren’t refined in the way of a premium sparkler, they’re chunky and clumsy. But, for £4.99, what do you expect?
If you’re wondering how in the dark arts Lidl achieves that sub-£5 price point, here’s how. It’s made by the forced carbonation method, as if you were pumping up your car tyre or adding spritz to your drink via a Soda Stream. It’s how they make soda and fizzy soft drinks, and is infinitely less costly and time consuming than the other method.
The supermarket drink is ‘to die for’ (Picture: Getty Images)
The ‘Traditional Method’, on the other hand, involves yeast, two fermentations and over a year to produce the bubbles, which are finer and biscuity tasting. Champagne, Cava and English sparkling wine are made that way, hence the whole not getting any change for £30 situation. Even Prosecco, the ‘drink-me-now’ party popper, is made fizzy via yeast fermentation.
With the forced carbonation method, only food-grade CO2 is added, from a vessel known as a saturator. It’s a metal capsule with super small pores, used to distribute the gas in fine streams. The wine is chilled until it’s nearly frozen, making it easier for the wine to absorb the gas in an instant. It’s then stoppered and put on shelf, ready for someone to pop it open, pronto.
And though forced carbonation is currently used to produce sparkling wines at the bargain end of the market, winemakers are now using it to make more innovative wines that don’t suit the more expensive and time-consuming traditional method. There are other benefits, like having complete control of how much CO2 goes into the wine, the fact that gas preserves the wines aromatics, the ease of manipulating the wine’s texture according the grape variety or preferred style, reducing alcohol levels and not having to pay silly money to drink them.
Now we’re all acquainted with the various methods of making wine fizzy, here are some of the best to get the festive party popping:
Contevedo Cava Brut, Spain, £5.49, Aldi
A deeply impressive drink for the price (Picture: Aldi)
I can’t rate this Cava highly enough, it’s deeply impressive for the price point. Flavour-wise, you’ll get lashings …read more
Source:: Metro
