Although the recession is all around, it is unthinkable for an average Croat to welcome the New Year without hearing the pop from a bottle of sparkling wine. Twenty years ago, on the market there was only Bakarska Vodica, which is not a real sparkling wine but just artificially carbonated wine, more a soft drink than a wine. This cheap product of socialist times is still sold and in lot of us evokes sweet nostalgia for our childhood.

Fortunately, in the last five years or so Croatian winemakers have timidly started to produce some really good sparkling wine, mostly using the classical method. The most famous names are certainly Peršurić, Meneghetti, Tomac and Šember.

In these tough times we wanted to know is it possible to find a decent Croatian sparkling wine under 100 kn which can offer value for money as the big international players like Prosecco and Cava.

Therefore, a week ago we organized a blind tasting of budget-friendly sparkling wines from Croatia, Spain, Italy and Germany, which we got from our friends in Dobra Vina wine shops. OK, we admit, it was a bit awkward to mix bruts with one semi sec, but there you have it. Our jury was similar to the one we had a month ago when we tested “young” and Beaujolais style wines, but this time girls outnumbered guys – there were 5 guys and 6 girls. None of them are wine experts, but they are savvy consumers who regularly enjoy and buy wines and are interested in food-wine pairing.

Here are the results:

1. Henkel Trocken Sekt 52,90 kn – 3.25
Nice acids and fruits in the mouth, not too sweet. Simple style, but fun and enjoyable.
2. La Farra Valdobbiadene DOCS Prosecco Superiore 49,90 kn – 3.00
Nice fruity aromas, a bit too sweet, but still well-balanced with acids, powerful in the mouth, easy drinking.
3. Frajona, Krk island 59,90 kn – 2.60
Unusual but interesting aromas for a sparkling wine, like the sea, seashells and a bit of smoke. The flavor is too invasive and one-dimensional.
4. Freixenet Carta Nevada 49,90 kn – 2.50
Smells nice, but it is too sweet in the mouth. Quite quickly it becomes boring.
5. Peršurić Misal Millenium 99,90 kn – 2.25
The bottle we got was faulty, cork taint was evident. The smell was moldy and that’s why the jury penalized it. But in the mouth there is plenty of ripe yellow fruits.

In a nutshell, not a single bottle was accepted with enthusiasm and none aroused too much emotions. They all tasted just as you would expect from wines produced on industrial scale. Misal actually comes from a small family-owned winery with a line of some really nice sparkling wines, and we are looking forward to try a good bottle of their Millenium next time. Overall, wines that are too sweet were penalized (even though we had more than 50% of girls in the jury), so dryness is definitely much more appreciated. It’s too bad we didn’t have Maximo from Kutjevo, maybe the best value-for-money sparkling wine in Croatia at the moment. We also have high hopes for Poj from Mladina winery, a part of the Agrokor vina company. Obviously, the competition will be tough at our next blind tasting.

Conclusion? Higher-end sparkling wines in Croatia are already offering some really classy bottles, but in the budget-friendly category, it seems that more effort has to be invested to produce a good-quality, reliable, competitive and above all enjoyable wine. Looking forward to it, because everybody deserves bubbles more than just once a year.