Sparkling Red Wine

Filed in archive Sparkling Wine on April 23, 2006

No, I haven't tried this, but I am very intrigued. I love sparkling wine. It's not always that kind to me the morning after, but I love a big glass of bubbly, and why should I stick to the same old white when there are Rumball Sparkling wines to consider?

From Australia, the beginnings of what eventually became Rumballs started back in 1983 when Peter Rumball started experimenting:

I was stretching my abilities and had started making trial batches of sparkling red from Coonawarra Shiraz. Coonawarra is a premium Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon grapegrowing area in the South East of South Australia - on the map about half way between Adelaide and Melbourne. The early experimental tirages were stirred in a 200L drum and filled into bottles by hand. I started making trial sparkling shiraz by the "Methode Champenoise" (MC) and to this day I still use this intensive, time consuming method. The method involves secondary fermentation, ageing, and subsequent disgorgement all from the one bottle, thereby giving superior finished wines. By 1985 I was making more sparkling red, and in early 1988 I released by first commercial Non-Vintage (NV) RumballSparkling Shiraz, which I called SB4 Sparkling Burgundy. The "SB" merely designates the blend Number, not a specific vintage year.

Read more about the history of sparkling red wines as well as locate a Rumball distributor near you on the company's website: www.rumball.com