Wine with Leslie: The best sparkling wine and champagne to toast with this New Year’s Eve

Ring in the New Year with a bottle of fizz

Fizz options for under €30 and over €30 

This New Year’s Eve column is appropriately devoted to fizz. Given tighter budgets I have two less expensive options including a Blanquette de Limoux from the Languedoc, a rarely seen wine.

Blanquette is the local name for mauzac, a grape also found in Gaillac in SW France but almost nowhere else. It ripens late with good acidity so is well-suited to sparkling wine production. Sadly producers I’ve met in the Languedoc are often unfairly dismissive of mauzac and prefer to make Crémant de Limoux with chardonnay and chenin blanc instead.