Fizz to make your summer sparkle

Drinking sparkling wine always comes with a frisson of glamour. That has as much to do with clever messaging by the good people of Champagne as it does with anything innately special about bubbles: after more than 200 years of remorseless repetition from debonair Champenois marketers, we are hardwired to associate fizz with celebration and the high life.

This feeling has survived a great democratisation of sparkling wine-drinking over the past decade or so. Good sparkling wine can now be found pretty much everywhere wine is made. The days when it was a straightforward either/or, of cheap prosecco and cava vs expensive champagne, are long behind us, and more people are treating bubbles as a regular part of their drinking repertoire. 

According to most supermarket buyers and wine merchants I talk to, the sparkling wines that are doing best are those in the £10-£20 band. This middle zone, above basic prosecco and below the bottom end of champagne and English sparkling, is where sparkling wine has developed most in recent years. It’s also where I’ll be sourcing most of my summer fizz.

I’d start with a pair of bottles that show how good the sometimes-underrated big guns of cava and prosecco can be. Miquel Pons Brut Reserva Guarda Superior 2022 (£11.95, the Wine Society) comes from the heart of traditional cava country in the Penedès region, inland from Barcelona. Made using the traditional cava trio of grape varieties (xarel·lo, macabeo and parellada), it tastes of fresh, nutty bread, lime and apple, with a hint of chamomile. To be sipped with a bowl of roast almonds.

Waitrose No1 Rive di San Pietro di Feletto Prosecco Superiore 2025 (£11), meanwhile, is gently floral, with fresh, juicy stone fruit and a finely foaming mousse. A step up on most supermarket prosecco, it comes from one of 43 steep-sloped sites, or Rives, which have been singled out as some of the best places in the classic prosecco-producing zone, in north-eastern Italy’s Veneto.

French sparkling wines made using the same “traditional method” as champagne (ie with the second, fizz-giving fermentation happening in the bottle) have never been better. My current favourite comes from a single appellation in the Loire. Made entirely from chenin blanc, Bernard Fouquet Domaine des Aubuisières Vouvray Brut NV (£15.30, or £13.60 by the case of 12 bottles, Haynes, Hanson & Clark) is a luminous joy, with wonderful depth of fresh apple juice and bubbles as fine as any more expensive champagne. Outstanding value.

Another place that has mastered the champagne method is Tasmania, where the cool maritime climate seems particularly suited to the growing of the chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier grapes used back in north-eastern France (and in the UK). One of the pioneers, Jansz, consistently offers some of the best-value “méthode tasmanoise”: Jansz Premium Cuvée, Tasmania Brut NV (£17.50, Amathus) is swish with brioche and fresh lemon citrus.

No slouches with their own take on the champagne method, South African winemakers Cap Classique are also dab hands at fruity pét-nat and ancestral-method fizz. Pressure Point Méthode Ancestrale 2025, from the Paarl region (£14.50, Charlie’s Drinks Store), is a tangy, rosehippy rosé that will enliven even the dampest English summer’s day.