What Is the Best Champagne for Mimosas?
What is the best Champagne for mimosas? Or what is the best Sparkling Wine for mimosas? Watch our short video to help you select the best bubbly for your brunch!
What is the best Champagne for Mimosas?
We get asked at Elma Wine & Liquor quite often what the best champagne or sparkling wine is for mimosas. Typically that kind of question comes up around holidays that involve brunch. Easter and Mother’s Day come to mind. We want to take a few minutes and talk about the best type of Champagne or sparkling wine to use when you’re making a mimosa or variations of mimosas.
What is a Mimosa? Should I go Sweet or Dry?
A traditional mimosa is sparkling wine and orange juice, but these days people are using different types of juices as well. Variations also include splashes of products like St Germain elderflower liqueur or other types of fruity schnapps. But just to make a standard mimosa the first question you should ask yourself and the people that are going to be drinking it is whether you like sweeter or drier beverages. As for myself personally, I tend to go with something on the drier side for a Champagne because I find the juice to be a little bit high in sugar and sweet anyway. A majority of our customers tend to opt for the sweeter Champagne and the sweeter sparkling wine because that is what they enjoy.
French Champagne or Less Expensive Alternative?
Once you’ve established that then you can go to what style or type you might like. Traditional French Champagnes typically come with price tags well over $30 up into the hundreds of dollars. If you’re mixing it with juice I don’t usually recommend that you go that route. However, if you know that most of the people are going to be drinking enjoy it without juice then a nice French Champagne might be the option for you.
Prosecco from Italy has become a popular choice lately. These tend to be a little bit lighter and sweeter than Champagnes, but not super sweet. Prosecco is a good middle of the road option with more reasonable price tags so you don’t feel as bad mixing them with juice. Another great option if you prefer the drier side is a Spanish Cava. Cava is to Spain what Champagne is to France. The ones we carry in particular are very dry and have moderate prices.
We have a number of people that come in asking for Asti Spumante to make their mimosas. Astis are a sweet sparkling wine from Italy. Asti is a region known for their sweet sparking wines, usually made with Moscato grapes. There are some good alternatives to Astis that also come from Italy. Be sure to let the person know working at your local wine store what you’re doing with the sparkling wine. If you are mixing it they should be helpful in finding a a moderate priced alternative for you.
Spumante vs. Extra Dry vs. Brut
Just for your reference some of the descriptor words that you’ll see on Champagne or sparkling wine and bottles. Spumante, which generally is one of the sweeter wine categories, extra dry which is somewhat in the middle of the sweetness scale and then Brut on the driest side.
If you are looking for more information on the difference between Champagne and sparkling wine, check out our video on the subject here.
That’s it for today, we look forward to all of your future questions and comments and any feedback you have on our videos and we will hope to see you soon, cheers.
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