This California winery with Barcelona roots delivers refreshing sparkling wines

Wineries that make sparkling wines tend to be bubbles specialists. A tasty bubbly is much harder to produce than standard still wines and requires special equipment and incredible expertise. For example, sparkling winemakers using the premium Champagne method must blend together thin, tart “base wines” which taste nothing like the final product. They also must make 100% of their winemaking decisions — how to ferment, how long to age, and how much sweetening to add at the final stage — based on the flavor of these proto-wines. Imagine a film director having to commit to 100% of their edits and effects before seeing the raw footage stitched together in sequence and you’ll have a sense of the predictive powers necessary.

One consequence of the skill level required for making good sparklers is that a very small number of wine companies dominate the sparkling wine landscape. In California, almost all of those making premium bubbles are owned by a larger sparkling wine company based in Europe. Most of these have ties to Champagne houses, but not all trace their roots to France. Gloria Ferrer is owned by the Barcelona-based family behind the Spanish Cava juggernaut Freixenet, the world’s largest producer of “traditional method” sparkling wines. The Ferrers were the first to establish a sparkling-centric winery in Carneros in 1984, what is now California’s leading appellation for prestige sparkling wines. They were able to bring an exceptional base of knowledge and sparkling wine resources to bear on the challenge of making great bubbles on a new frontier.

Today, they are still delivering impeccable sparkling wines like this one, a brut cuvée made primarily with pinot noir. The wine strikes a perfect balance between richness of texture and crisp refreshment, with delicate flavors of red delicious apples and Asian pears and an underlying thread of toasty aromas reminiscent of the crust of a flaky croissant.

$17.99; 12.5% alcohol

PLCB Item #6575

Sale price through 10/3 — regularly $21.99

Also available at:

Canal’s in Mount Ephraim, — $16.49, mycanals.com; Joe Canal’s in Lawrenceville, N.J. — $18.49, lawrenceville.jcanals.com; Total Wine & More in Wilmington and Claymont, Del. — $18.49, www.totalwine.com.