Wine
The Best Wines To Celebrate This Festive Season
The diversity and quality of Australian wine are some of this country’s great gifts, especially when it comes to festive celebrations.
With so much choice on offer, we thought we’d put together our picks for the best wines to enjoy over the holiday season and some of the best foods to pair with for your festive feasts!
Wonderful white wines? Check. Rosé and traditional Sparkling? Check. Delectable red wines? Check.
SPARKLING WHITE WINE
The great thing about Australian Sparkling wine is how accessible it is for anyone after something celebratory to enjoy. Many Australian producers specialise in uncomplicated, people-pleasing styles that are great go-to’s with finger food, shared plates, and simply prepared or fried seafood.
In Australia, Sparkling White wine is commonly made using Chardonnay grapes to create a medium-bodied and dry wine. It often possesses yeasty characters and fruit-forward peach, apple, grapefruit, and melon flavours. Sparkling White can happily hold its head high with a reputation that matches Champagne’s best.
Thanks to championing regions like Tasmania and Tumbarumba, we are starting to see examples that express purity of fruit and clever winemaking decisions.Once popped, Champagne, Prosecco, Sparkling Whites and Sparkling Reds quickly lose their carbonation or fizz. Use a Sparkling wine stopper and store it in the fridge for no more than two days.
SPARKLING ROSÉ
Australian Sparkling Rosé is a treat discovered by more and more wine lovers looking for a light, refreshing style of wine. After all, it combines everything you love about Sparkling wine with everything Rosé is so adored for! Dry and refined, it pairs naturally with delicate food, particularly raw or cured seafood.
The main difference between Sparkling White wines and Rosé Sparkling wines is the time spent on skins. Red grape skins are left to macerate in juice briefly to extract colour, flavour, and some tannin. Then, when the ideal colour has been achieved, the juice is filtered off the skins and primary fermentation is completed like a white wine.
When making Sparkling Rosé, many winemakers use the delicate red berries of the Pinot Noir grape to bring out the blushing pink hues that make these wines so attractive, though any red wine grape variety can be used.
SPARKLING RED WINE
Deliciously complex, sophisticated and uniquely Australian, Sparkling Reds are the perfect choice to spice up your special occasions and bring delectable delight to any celebration.
Like other Sparkling wines, Sparkling Reds are a style, not a variety. Filled with exotic spices, rich red fruits, velvety tannins and beautiful bubbles, they can be made from several red wine grapes, including Shiraz, Merlot, Cabernet, Chambourcin, Pinot Noir and Durif.
Sparkling Red wines are typically very ripe and rely on rich fruit characters, usually combined with a degree of sweetness, to achieve their impact. They are a superb festive wine, ideal with classic roasts, clove-studded ham, or roast turkey. They are also delicious with barbequed ribs, Chinese roast duck, and chocolate desserts.
ROSÉ
Australian Rosé is flying off the shelves, and with good reason – they’re absolutely delicious and are so versatile. Rosé pairs wonderfully with a wide range of foods and can take you from Christmas brunch, lunch, and sundowners to dinner. Served chilled on a Christmas Day (or any day), there really isn’t a wine more suited to sipping in the Aussie summer sunshine.
CHARDONNAY
Like sunshine in a glass, modern Australian Chardonnay is a satisfying wine to pass the time with during the warmer weather of the festive season. Its texture and flavour also make it the ideal choice with pork, poultry and flavoursome seafood feasts – in other words, just the thing for the laden tables of the Christmas and New Year season!
Your BONUS Brothers Fidium Chardonnay 2022 in our exclusive KingsBottle offer will make the perfect addition to any festive celebration. Crafted from premium Margaret River fruit, it’s a bold and expressive style, with a generous mix of yellow and orange fruit, lovely nutty complexity, toasty vanillin oak and a textural finish.
SEMILLON
Australian Semillon famously offers a unique flavour experience; some are so good that their qualities are unseen in the rest of the wine world! Semillon has naturally lower alcohols, which means it is brilliant as an aperitif. Its citrusy nature makes it a no-brainer with light seafood dishes— especially fresh fish, prawns, crabs, and oysters. Richer, more textural aged Semillon pairs beautifully with marron and other shellfish, fresh seafood dishes including butter-based sauces, poultry and pork.
CABERNET SAUVIGNON
Big, brooding, and flavoursome, Australian Cabernet Sauvignon is regarded as among the world’s best and is a classic and much-loved addition to Aussie festive feasts.
Included as a BONUS in our exclusive KingsBottles offer, the Tulloch Cellar Door Release Limited Edition Cabernet Sauvignon 2023 is an excellent example of the styles produced in high-altitude vineyards in the Orange region. It’s deliciously dry, earthy and savoury in a mid-weight style, with fine-boned acidity, supple tannins, and oak in balance with the fruit. It is a perfect pairing to any rich meat on your Christmas table, or you can cellar for up to 10 years.
PINOT NOIR
If you’re yet to discover the pleasures of Pinot Noir, you simply don’t know what you’re missing out on! This much-beloved varietal is just the ticket for the warmer months – lighter-bodied in style than the average red, its silken texture makes it fantastic with cheese or mushroom-based dishes, Christmas ham and game birds.
SHIRAZ
One of the most sensational aspects of Australian Shiraz is that there are expressions for every taste. Served at casual barbeque catch-ups to quintessential Christmas feasts, it’s an all-time favourite for Aussie festive gatherings. Shiraz will make your festive season sensational when paired with a host of dishes, such as pepper-crusted rib-eye, soy-glazed roast pork belly, or rich cassoulet.
In the summer months, don’t be afraid to pop your red wines in the fridge for 30 minutes, so you don’t serve them too warm.
THE PERFECT WINES FOR EVERY TASTE AND OCCASION
Whatever your tastes for celebrating and spending time with loved ones over the festive season, Wine Selectors has you covered. We’ve got great wine selections and sensational savings on some of the best Australian wines.
Remember to drink responsibly, and enjoy a safe and happy festive season from everyone here at Wine Selectors!
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