Champagne competitive in quality -- but rarely in value for money

Once a year, I organize a blind wine tasting that I've called the Battle of the Bubbles. We taste eight sparkling wines, four of which are Champagnes, and four of which are not, and participants vote on which are their favorite wines and which they think are the Champagnes. 

After eight years of doing this, the result is fairly predictable. Most people can't tell the difference between a Champagne and a good Cava, Sekt, Belbul or other sparkling wine, and everyone is surprised how good some of the sparkling-wines-that-we're-not-allowed-to-call-Champagne can be. Some years the winner has been a German wine, or a Greek wine, or a Belgian wine that sell for a fraction of the price of the top-notch Champagnes they were pitted against.  

This year was only slightly different. Champagne defended its corner nobly, tying Rest of World in terms of favorites 4-4. In the first round, which pitted a Castellane Brut Champagne against a Portuguese Casa do Canto Blanc des Noirs Brut, the result was almost a tie. In others there was a clear favorite: In the second round, the Ullmann Pinot Rosé from the Black Forest pleased people more than the already very good Cuvée Aphrodite Brut Rosé Champagne from Damien Chauvet. In the third, the Bouvet Ladubay Lançay Blanc des Blancs Brut from the Loire Valley easily beat the Meiter Brut Champagne. And in the fourth, the Moët & Chandon Brut Impérial easily beat the Syx Sense Brut from De Nachtegael in West Flanders. 

It was a pure coincidence that Wine Searcher published its annual review of Champagnes and concluded that they were having a hard time in the marketplace.