I absolutely love Christmas season! Even though it doesn’t get cold in Australia, you can still feel the festivity in the air. Everyone is in good spirits, and there is so much on you sometimes forget what day it is! I love to entertain at this time of year, really any excuse, and this year I decided that we would host a friend’s Christmas.  Everyone has been so busy this year that I saw it as a good opportunity for us all to get together.

The wine was definitely flowing at this party, but there was one that my friend brought along that was so good I had to share it. It’s pretty standard that I’ll grab wine bottles and take photos of them for the blog before we drink them, and luckily she’s used to it! She bought it at the Good Food and Wine Show that we went to a couple of months ago. She decided to bring it over so we could enjoy it together! Seriously, wine friends are the best friends.

The wine is from Adelaide Hills from a smaller boutique producer that had a number of great wines at the show. Her name is Jo Irvine, and all her wines have labels that depict greyhounds because she has a couple herself. My sister has a whippet who looks like a greyhound and so it was love at first sight when I saw her wines! Then I tried them and it just got better! Sadly we didn’t buy any that day, but my friend grabbed the Levrier NV Sparkling Meslier Brut Rosé.

Now I am not one to pass up any sparkling around Christmas, but this one felt like something special. And if there is any occasion you should be cracking out the special sparkling, isn’t it Christmas time?

The Levrier NV Sparkling Meslier Brut Rosé is something unusual for Australia. The Meslier grape is a grape that originated in France, and is one of the rarest grapes in the world. There are actually only a few hectares of this grape that are known about, and some of these are in Adelaide Hills, lucky for us! This wine is the product of a family vineyard where Jo’s father planted the grapes, and Jo has hand-picked them to make this very special sparkling wine.

What I loved first about this wine was the colour. Being a sparkling Rosé I was expecting it to be bright pink in colour. But when poured, this wine was the most beautiful rose gold. It was so beautiful, and actually reminded me of Christmas decorations! I loved that it was something unusual, and that the colour was so subtle, as many French Rosés are.

The next best thing about this wine though was the flavour. I was expecting something sweet being a Rosé, but this wine was beautiful and light. The wine has a great crisp flavour, sort of like what you get from a nice green apple, and this made it really refreshing. It wasn’t a heavy wine, and quite light and delicate in its flavours. It was so pleasant to drink and actually a little too refreshing on a hot evening in Brisbane, so the bottle definitely didn’t last long. I wish it had lasted all night because I could have drunk that wine for much longer!

We enjoyed this sparkling before dinner with some cheeses and dips, but I really don’t think you should pair it with anything. This wine is so special it is great on its own, and doesn’t need food to be enjoyed. However, if you were to pair it with something Christmas themed, I think fresh seafood would be the way to go (although I don’t eat a lot of it – all the more for you). It would also go great with fruity fresh desserts after a long lunch, such as a pavlova covered in fresh berries and zingy passionfruit.

Although this wine is more on the expensive side of what I would normally drink, it truly is something different and special. It may be a sparkling wine at a Champagne price, but I think it is worth it given you are getting a wine that you can’t find everywhere. The careful thought that has gone into making this wine the wine it shows through the delicate flavour and beautiful colour. Whilst it is a special occasion wine, it is definitely worth splurging on! It goes to show that not all amazing sparkling comes out of Champagne because you can get something unusual and special right from Australia!