I often take sparkling wine to a party, so it’s nice to have a go-to bottle that’s affordable. That means Champagne is out; so is a lot of the best domestic stuff.
This bubbly from Argentina, at $13, is a great crowd-pleaser. (And it’s inexpensive enough to be an everyday pleasure.) The wine is a blend of 75 percent chardonnay and 25 percent pinot noir, grown at 4,000 feet in the Tupungato district of Mendoza, at the foot of the Andes. The grapes are organically grown, and the wine is produced using the charmat method, made in a pressurized tank. The resulting fizz is very fresh, with racy flavors of apple and lemon.
As the Bousquet name suggests, the winery is owned by a family with its roots in France (near Carcassonne, to be precise). Jean Bousquet, a third-generation winemaker, bought his Mendoza property in 1997 and released his first vintage in 2005. His daughter Anne Bousquet and her husband, Labid Al Ameri, took over ownership in 2011.