By Matthew Fitzsimmons
Few beverages are as closely associated with special occasions as sparkling wine. In fact, around 20% of sparkling sales occur in December, according to industry statistics.
While New Year’s Eve bubbly sounds wonderful, there’s no reason to wait for a holiday to send corks flying. Sparkling a food-friendly, versatile beverage, suitable for any occasion.
Sparkling’s acidity allows it to cut through fatty foods, while the wine’s lower tannin structure prevents it from overpowering a dish. This acidity also acts like a palate cleanser, making it especially ideal at the start of a meal.
Understanding The Bubbles in Your Glass
Sparkling wine is created by trapping the carbon dioxide that is produced while fermenting the grapes. The method used to trap those bubbles impacts the style and quality of the final wine, and its price point.
“Pétillant naturel” (or pét-nats for short) are a fairly low-cost method to produce sparkling wine. Such wines are created when a still wine’s initial fermentation is paused while in the bottle. When the wine re-ferments later, CO2 becomes trapped inside. Pét-nats are especially popular in wineries that lack the expensive infrastructure to produce more complicated sparkling wine.
The Charmat method (also known as the tank method) is the format used to produce Prosecco. The “liqueur de tirage” (a combination of sugar and yeast) is added to a base wine and processed in large steel tanks. These wines tend to have a more fresh fruit flavor, and are an economical way to mass-produce bubbly.
The “Méthode Traditionnelle” is the most famous (and expensive) way to make sparkling wine. The liqueur de tirage is added to a finished still wine, creating a completely new fermentation inside the bottle. This process is difficult to manage without specialized equipment, which until recently has limited their availability in Virginia.
Traditional wine regions have stringent rules on how their wine is made. France mandates Champagne must be made from chardonnay, pinot noir, and/or pinot meunier (plus a handful of other minor varieties) and produced using the Méthode Traditionnelle. Prosecco can only be made using the glera grape and via the tank method.
By contrast, Virginia sparkling wine isn’t tied to any certain style. Local sparkling includes everything from wines that are dead-ringer for well-made champagnes, everyday pét-nats, to sparkling that use grape varieties that are almost never associated with sparkling wine.
This willingness to embrace versatility has served the Virginia wine industry well, allowing sparkling winemakers to focus on styles that do well locally.
While lower-cost formats continue to be utilized, the way local wineries approach sparkling wine is starting to change. No longer is the production of Champagne-like bubbly confined to a handful of market leaders, such as Thibault-Janisson, Trump Winery, and Veritas Vineyards. Instead, more Virginia wineries than ever are adopting premium methods of sparkling production.
Why Virginia Sparkling Is Better (And More Available) Than Ever
Two Loudoun producers leading this charge are Stone Tower Winery and Petit Domaine. Petit Domaine opened in October 2025, and is Virginia’s first all-sparkling winery and estate. Stone Tower finished its sparkling production facility in 2022.
Outside Loudoun, Cave Ridge, Stinson Vineyards, and others are likewise making traditional-method sparkling wine in-house. These are in addition to a larger lineup of wineries that either partner with other sparkling producers, or make more economical charmat or pét-nat-style bubbly.
Ironically, this trend towards more premium local sparkling wine seems to fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Wine sales, including sparkling, are dropping worldwide as younger consumers explore low or no-alcohol beverages. Yet individual sectors of the sparkling market such as Prosecco remain resilient.
So why are Virginia wineries deciding to go for premium bubbly?
One reason is it’s easier than ever to perform the final steps to make traditional method sparkling in Virginia. Businesses such as the Virginia Sparkling Company can provide customers the ‘finishing’ necessary to make Champagne-style bubbly. A number of wineries have also invested in the ability to self-produce traditional method sparkling, and these efforts are coming to fruition.
Another reason is the economics that underpin Virginia wine are different from elsewhere in the world. Several of the wealthiest counties in the US are adjacent to Virginia wine country, making the economics behind higher-priced sparkling wine more feasible.
Lastly, many winemakers are going premium precisely because it’s difficult, not despite it. Champagne is the world’s gold standard for sparkling wine. This inspires many producers to emulate its best qualities, even if the recipe they use may be slightly different.
“Within the varieties of sparkling wine production, the most timeless and well-crafted is the traditional method,” explained Petit Domaine winemaker Shai Van Gelder, “Here, meticulous attention to the little decisions and hard work pays off. There are less-intensive methods to make sparkling wine, but they come at the expense of the final quality. Only wines made using the traditional method can deliver the elegance and complexity that we aspire to achieve.”
About the Author: Matthew Fitzsimmons is a blogger who consumed a considerable amount of Virginia sparkling wine in the research of this article. Track his favorites at https://winetrailsandwanderlust.com