The best sparkling wines for your buck (featuring Aldi’s ‘fresh and fun’ French fizz for just $9)

Date night (or mate night) doesn’t have to break the bank. And neither does a decent bottle of sparkling wine. From pet-nat to prosecco, Australian non-vintage to champagne, we’ve found a fizz to suit every occasion.

Prosecco

In Australia, prosecco is often seen as second-class fizz. Rubbish. Choose carefully and you’ll not only score a bargain, but also a refreshing mood lifter.

When choosing your prosecco, consider style. Choose from extra brut (less than six grams of residual sugar per litre, so quite dry and intense), brut (between 0 and 12 grams of residual sugar and much fresher), extra dry (12 to 17 grams of residual sugar, so quite sweet), dry (between 17 and 32 grams, which is super sweet) and brut nature (aged on lees, which results in a cloudy, bone-dry wine). If spicy food is on the menu, dry prosecco’s sugar hit is a winner.

TRY: For something cool, try the Dal Zotto for P&V Prosecco NV ($25, pnvmerchants.com). King Valley prosecco pioneers Dal Zotto made it exclusively for Sydney-based wine and liquor merchants P&V. La Prova Prosecco 2023 ($28, laprova.com.au) is another sexy drop. It was made by talented Adelaide Hills-based winemaker Sam Scott, using King Valley fruit. If you simply must have Italian prosecco, go for examples from Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG. For little more than $20, you can find examples in wine shops across Australia.

Pet-nat

There was a time, not so long ago, that the world and all its hipsters caught the petillant naturel bug and hollered, “Praise be for pet-nat” while guzzling gallons of the stuff at wine bars across the globe. A surge ensued, and the result, unsurprisingly, was a market full of great and not-so-great examples. The good ones, however, are worth seeking out.

Petillant naturel loosely translates to “naturally sparkling” in French and is made using the methode ancestrale technique, which dates back hundreds of years.

The ancestral method involves only one fermentation. The wine is moved from the vat into individual bottles while it is still fermenting, and then sealed under a crown cap. Compare that with the champagne method, which starts the second fermentation in the bottle after the first fermentation is complete. Pet-nat’s more rustic approach means it is usually less regulated and more diverse.

“At times it irks me that people think there’s nothing serious about pet-nat,” says The Other Right winemaker Alex Schulkin, who started making the style in 2013. “Those making it for the first time probably think it’s the easy option – just like we did when we started making it.”

A well-made pet-nat should not explode in your face when you open it. When he’s not at his day job as a wine scientist, Adelaide Hills-based Schulkin works tirelessly to hand-disgorge his pet nats so they don’t erupt when you open the bottle.

In a nutshell, disgorging is a laborious process that involves expelling spent yeast cells from the bottle. The bottles are stored so the yeast collects in the bottleneck, which is placed in a freezing liquid. When the bottle cap is momentarily removed, the frozen plug of yeast is expelled.

“It is probably the most labour-intensive wine we make, but we still like the vibe, the flamboyance of it and the unassuming nature of pet-nat,” Schulkin says.

“My sage advice for those who are not heavily into wine but still want to drink reasonable stuff is to look at the back label and make sure it’s not designed to look like a small family enterprise but is, in fact, a multinational.”

TRY: For an example that sets the bar high, find The Other Right Bright Young Thing White ($36, theotherrightwines.com). The Ngeringa Petillant Naturel 2023 ($40, ngeringa.com) is a pretty option. The sparkling biodynamic rosé is also made in the Adelaide Hills using syrah, pinot noir, viognier and semillon. It begs for an accompanying watermelon, mint and feta salad.

Aussie sparkling

Whether you’re hitting Victoria’s Yarra Valley, Pyrenees, King Valley, Mornington Peninsula, Tasmania, the Adelaide Hills, or New South Wales’ secret sparkling location Tumbarumba, rest assured, we’ve got it good. Australian sparkling keeps getting better and is a no-brainer for feel-good “shop local” vibes.

When Lucy and Xavier Bizot created their Terre à Terre and DAOSA labels in 2008, they drew on Bizot’s French wine family history in Champagne and Lucy’s upbringing in the Adelaide Hills. Their focus on quality is unwavering and, in a bid to ensure integrity, they trademarked the name “Method Classic”, which describes and protects their sparkling wine process (in line with the best Australian practices while also following the principles of the French champagne method). It’s all good news for setting benchmarks and driving quality in the Australian sparkling scene.

TRY: Tasmania’s Clover Hill Cuvee Exceptionnelle Rosé 2017 ($75, cloverhillwines.com.au) is great as an aperitif or with fish. And in cool-climate Tumbarumba, in the NSW Snowy Mountains, you can’t go past the astoundingly stunning Courabyra Wines 805 Vintage Brut 2016 ($65, courabyrawines.com).

The French stuff

Much like opting to use crockery over paper plates, it’s easy to make entertaining a little more special with champagne. “Champagne is a light, dry, effervescent, refreshing drink and you can pretty much enjoy any champagne during the day or night,” says Sydney-based Champagne Bureau director and educator John Noble. “Think about a beautiful sunny day serving snacks to your friends in your backyard. Champagne adds pizazz at any time of day.”

But in these fiscally straitened times, even a gourmet toastie can be a stretch. Can you get a decent French champagne for less than 35 bucks? You bet.

TRY: The Marie De Moy Champagne NV ($32.99, aldi.com.au). It’s fresh and fantastic with finger-licking snacks on the couch while watching your favourite television series. If that’s too much pressure on your bank account, and you just want fizz for the sake of celebration, you can’t go past the Veuve Olivier French Sparkling Wine NV. It’s fresh, dry and fun for $8.99 (yes, you read that right), also at Aldi.