What will you will be picking for your New Year’s Eve bubbles? I am going with Andre Clouet Grande Reserve Brut. It is around $50, all Pinot Noir, and delicious. I like a Champs that is on the richer and more complex side, and this one tics the boxes as well as some of the big house options. If you like your bubbles lighter and more redolent of fruit notes, try Sokol Blosser Bluebird, a very nice Oregon brut in the just over $20 range. I love Champagne enough that in the days of Wretched Excess (late 1970s through early 1990s) I sprang for a fair number of high dollar Champagnes and, candidly, got a little spoiled. My gateway drug was Krug 1966 for $17.76 a bottle for the bicentennial, purchased at Marty’s in Dallas. Those were the days! I am now enjoying finding good value that still tastes phenomenal.
Would drink Dom P at home but here in Sardinia I’m seeing lorry-load of Italian sparkling wines. I steer well clear of highly fizzy sugar bombs, Italian or otherwise. Not sure what I’m drinking yet. Will know tomorrow when I visit a wine shop in the capital. Maybe I can find Ruinart.
Moldova produces decent sparkling wine, and it’s stupid not to try considering the price. But one has to go to Moldova.
What I also like is sparkling Riesling from a specific area in Germany called “Middle Mosel” valley. It has to be made in the style of Champagne, however. Just “sparkling” in the name has fizz added and nothing more. The (sparkling) Rieslings from this area have a very noticeable mineral taste that expresses its terroir. Unfortunately, one also has to drink it at the source. Because A, it’s produced in small quantities and B, not sold far from where it’s made.
I love Champagne, but besides the high price, it’s a waste for me to spring for and open a 750ml bottle as I have to limit my alcohol intake because of meds I’m taking (I’m not a big drinker anyway), and my wife barely drinks. Fortunately there are smaller-format bottles, which I buy. In particular, I buy 200ml bottles of Nicolas Feuillate Rosé for CDN $18.40.
Good suggestion, I’ll follow it sometime.
This NYE choice was made by someone else, so we ended up with a non-vintage Veuve Cliquot brut yellow label. It was a gift. The price for this VC is all over the place. It’s sometimes a $40 bottle at the large retailers. I deduced where our giftor purchased, and it’s $78 there! IMHO, it’s not bad at that lower price, but at the top end, I’d go elsewhere.
Nicky’s rose is a great choice. Cheers.
Slovenia has some wonderful sparklers. Movia produces a couple on the lees, so you have to disgorge them upside down in a bucket of water (take a bit of practice 
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Picked up a bottle of Baron Albert L’Universelle with my last wine order on a whim - blend of Pinot Meunier, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Reviews say it’s crisp, high acidity and high carbonation, all things I like. We’ll see how it drinks in a few days!
I’ll do a Gruet, as usual. Probably the Rosé, maybe the Blanc de Noirs. It’s just the cats and I, and they don’t care champagne. And there will be some left over for a morning Mimosa.
Which got me thinking about the worst New Year’s Eve of my adult life. I was jobless (which luckily soon changed), a friend had just died, my family was shunning me (never figured that one out). Determined to at least acknowledge the holiday, I bought a single-serving bottle
and chilled it. So - I had my kitchen cabinet door open to retrieve a flute - I popped the cork, it slipped from my hands, shot up straight into the shelf, and broke the flute. I startled, and of course spilled the little bottle of champagne. Stuff was everywhere. Hoping it wasn’t an omen for the upcoming year, I cleaned up the mess and went to bed. You couldn’t make this stuff up, I thought to myself.
Subsequent years have been much better, but it was a cautionary tale not to put too much emphasis on holidays. Or buy tiny bottles of champagne. 
Way back when, a friend at work and I used to joke that when we hit it big we would celebrate with Dom Perignon. He hit it big climbing up the corporate ladder, and made good on his promise a year a year ago, coming over with a bottle. It was sublime! I didn’t hit it big, so I didn’t have to buy a ($300+) bottle.
I can envision it all too easily, but someone has to write this into a rom-com script or SNL skit.
Gruet is less of a secret these days but still an amazing value.
We popped in to Eataly Boston today and noticed a sign outside the wine shop “ 20% off all champagne “. I didn’t know they even carried champagne, but sure enough they had a couple of shelves worth behind the register. With the discount I picked up a grower champagne I hadn’t heard of for $42. I’ll report after we’ve opened it.
No argument there. It’s landed on more than a few “best wines” lists.
A great chapter in your life story.
Yeah to that. If I hadn’t experienced it, it would be the stuff of scripts. At least that had occurred to me. 
As half of my family would say, OY!
I have drank a lot of champagne, mainly because my sister loves it and always wants to share a bottle, but I don’t really care for it. 
I’ll be drinking prosecco.
Diet Coke. One can
I picked up an extra shift on New Year’s Day cause time and a half before my hours are slashed so early to bed for me
I’ll find something fun for later to toast my fantasy football championship victory
Mr Autumm opened a 2014 bottle of surly darkness
Very nice. I’m jealous.
