This week we’re toasting the arrival of another week in the drinks business with a New Arrival that’s a cocktail in a bottle. Combining sparkling wine, orange liqueur, herbs and spices, it’s the Chandon Garden Spritz!
Thanks to the extraordinary popularity of Aperol, the brand with perhaps the worst slogan in the whole history of advertising, ‘together we joy,’ Spritzes are everywhere. On the blog, we’ve featured the Pomme Spritz, the Metaxa Spritz, and the 1796 Spritz. So much Spritz.
Spritz world
But what if you don’t want to take two or three bottles when enjoying a bit of al fresco spritzing? What if there was one bottle that could do it all? Well, clearly the boffins at Moët & Chandon were clearly thinking along the same lines as they’ve just come up with the Chandon Garden Spritz – a one-stop-shop for all your spritzing needs.
It’s called the Chandon Garden Spritz and it starts with a base of wine from Argentina. Moët has sparkling wine outposts all over the world including Domaine Chandon in California which opened in 1973 and Chandon in the Yarra Valley, Australia established in 1986, but the granddaddy of them all is Chandon Argentina in Mendoza which has been making sparkling wines since 1959 using the Champagne method and French grapes. This is a good 30 years before wines from South America began arriving in any quantity in Britain or the US.
Take two bottles on a picnic? Not me, I just Spritz and go
Summer in a bottle
As you can imagine from LVMH, the company behind not just Moët & Chandon but also Veuve Clicquot, Ruinart, and Dom Perignon. Chandon Argentina makes very good fizz. Its Brut won Best Argentinian Sparkling Wine 2020 at the Champagne and Sparkling Wine World Championships.
Chandon Garden Spritz is, however, something of a departure. It starts with a still wine made with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Semillon. Unlike Chandon Brut, which gets its bubbles from the Champagne-method where the wine is refermented in the bottle and left to mature, Chandon Garden Spritz uses the Charmat method. This is how they make fizz in Prosecco, it’s perfect for preserving the wine’s fresh fruit flavours. It involves refermenting the base wine in a pressurised tank so that it absorbs carbon dioxide.
To this sparkling base, the team adds wine naturally flavoured with orange liqueur made with Valencia citrus peel, and a secret mix of herbs and spices. Just like KFC. Apparently, the boffins at Moët took four years and 64 different versions to get the recipe right.
It’s certainly worth the wait. Many drinks claim to be summer in a bottle but Chandon Garden Spritz with its fresh oranges, gentle sweetness, and delicate fizz has to be a top contender for the title. It certainly sounds more appealing than ‘together we joy.’
Chandon Garden Spritz is available from Master of Malt. Click here to buy.
Tasting Note by The Chaps at Master of Malt
Creamy bubbles, soft hints of melon and lime, followed by a zesty hit of bittersweet orange peel, spiced fruit, and clove, with a crisp, dry finish.
