Breathless Brut
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Wine
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Product Details
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Winemaker Notes
Blend: 46% Chardonnay, 50% Pinot Noir, 4% Pinot Meunier.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This classy, dry wine looks coppery in color, smells like cinnamon and cherries, and tastes crisp and appetizing. It has great balance, good flavors and a lingering finish. Editor's Choice.
The sisters, along with Breathless Winemaker Penny Gadd-Coster, are dedicated to sparkling winemaking in the traditional method, creating refreshing sparkling wines that pair well with life’s special moments. Breathless Sparkling Wines are hand-crafted from select Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes using the traditional French method, méthode champenoise, guided by the expert winemaking hand of Penny Gadd-Coster. Penny, recently named “Winemaker of the Year” by the North Bay Business Journal, is a renowned winemaker with 35 years of experience in sparkling winemaking.
A term typically reserved for Champagne and Sparkling Wines, non-vintage or simply “NV” on a label indicates a blend of finished wines from different vintages (years of harvest). To make non-vintage Champagne, typically the current year’s harvest (in other words, the current vintage) forms the base of the blend. Finished wines from previous years, called “vins de reserve” are blended in at approximately 10-50% of the total volume in order to achieve the flavor, complexity, body and acidity for the desired house style. A tiny proportion of Champagnes are made from a single vintage.
There are also some very large production still wines that may not claim one particular vintage. This would be at the discretion of the winemaker’s goals for character of the final wine.
Reaching up California's coastline and into its valleys north of San Francisco, the North Coast AVA includes six counties: Marin, Solano, Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake. While Napa and Sonoma enjoy most of the glory, the rest produce no shortage of quality wines in an intriguing and diverse range of styles.
Climbing up the state's rugged coastline, the chilly Marin County, just above the City and most of Sonoma County, as well as Mendocino County on the far north end of the North Coast successfully grow cool-climate varieties like Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and in some spots, Riesling. Inland Lake County, on the other hand, is considerably warmer, and Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and Sauvignon Blanc produce some impressive wines with affordable price tags.