Yes, that’s right, prosecco, the soft, fruity, floral and appealing sparking wine from northeastern Italy that makes a perfect light-hearted aperitif, especially when you’re serving bubbly to hordes of revelers or before a dinner party. “Prosecco” is the name of the grape and the name of the product. Prosecco fills in nicely for sipping with fish and shellfish hors d’oeuvres and antipasti, occasions and food on which the best champagnes and sparkling wines would be wasted. Well, depending on your attitude and fiduciary prowess, maybe not, but when you’re having the Swiss Guard for New Year’s Eve and the pocketbook is a consideration, prosecco neatly stands to attention.

Prominent today is the Maschio dei Cavalieri Prosecco di Valdobbiabene Brut, non-vintage. Valdobbiabene, near the Piave river in the Veneto, is the official D.O.C. for the production of prosecco. The grape is also grown nearby in Colli Trevigiani. Prosecco sparkling wine can be frizzante, lightly fizzy, or spumante, fully bubbling. These products are rarely made by the champagne method of the second fermentation in the bottle, but are made in the bulk “charmat” process.

Anyway, the Maschio dei Cavalieri Prosecco di Valdobbiabene Brut is a superior rendition of the style. It sports a lovely medium gold color, a satisfactory stream of moderately tiny bubbles and a delicate cloud-like bouquet of peaches and lemons with hints of limestone and toast. This sparkling wine is slightly sweet at the entry, but it quickly turns dry in the mouth, the sweetness leveled by crisp acidity and a steely backbone. Very charming, with a rating of Very Good+. VB Imports, Old Brookville, N.Y. brought 1,000 cases to the U.S. Suggested retail price is $20.

In The New York Times this morning, food writer Alex Witchel uses the phrase “very, very dry, very very expensive” champagne, but very, very dry champagne doesn’t have to be very, very expensive.

Example: The Laurent-Perrier Brut L-P (from a house founded in 1812), a blend of 45% chardonnay, 40% pinot noir and 15% pinot meunier that quivers with keen minerality, zinging acid and exquisitely appointed dryness. The color is burnished light gold, and the glass is filled invitingly with millions of tiny, seething bubbles. Immediately, you smell the biscuits and toast, then green apple and citrus with hints of clove and ginger. There’s a touch of lushness in the mouth, with nutty, slightly roasted citrus flavors, but the emphasis is on the elegance and austerity of chalk and limestone; the effect is taut and distancing, almost glacial, though the finish gets toastier after a few minutes. LL and I love this style of champagne for its Alpine vivacity, purity and brightness. An Excellent rating. Suggested retail price is about $37; prices range on the Internet from about $30 to $60, so you pays yer money and you takes yer choice.Imported by Laurent-Perrier U.S. Inc., Sausalito, Ca.. Visit the company’s website here.

On the Third Day of Christmas with champagne or sparkling wine … well, you have to check back tomorrow.

… we drank a bottle of Pol Roger Reserve Brut with our usual Christmas morning breakfast of country ham, eggs, grits, red-eye gravy and homemade biscuits. Yep, I do this every year, and somehow it has developed that our favorite champagne with this very Southern meal is this exact very French one.

And having said that, I will announce the “Twelve Days of Christmas with Champagne and Sparkling Wine” series on BiggerThanYourHead, which starts today and goes through January 5, the fete called Twelfth Night, which falls on the eve of Epiphany. Each day I will describe a different champagne or sparkling wine, looking for varied styles and prices and versatility.

The house of Pol Roger was founded in 1849 and is still owned by the family.

The Pol Roger Reserve Brut is a nonvintage blend of one-third each chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier grapes. The champagne is a blend of at least two vintages and often three or four. It is not sold until the youngest component is at least three years old.

The moment you pour some Pol Roger Reserve Brut into a tall flute, aromas of fresh biscuits and toast emerge from the glass. The champagne is a pale gold color with a hint of silver, and the tiny bubbles form a consistent up-rushing stream. The champagne is taut and nervy, very dry and crisp, burgeoning with chalk and limestone that permeate flavors of lemon and roasted lemon with a touch of caramelized pear and dried spice. The finish is long, spicy and minerally. Excellent quality.

The dynamic crispness, the crackling energy of the champagne cut through the richness of the meal, the bracing saltiness of the ham, the rough lushness of the red-eye gravy. For those of you who don’t know, red-eye gravy is made by pouring a cup of coffee into the pan drippings from the ham, stirring and scraping to get all those ham bits loose and simmering for a few minutes to reduce it a bit.

Prices on the Internet are all over the map for this champagne, almost unconscionably so; look for a range between about $35 and $50. Imported by Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York

On the Second Day of Christmas … well, you have to come back tomorrow to see.

By the way, an account of last night’s Christmas Eve dinner at our house — a traditional “English” meal — with a great Bordeaux red wine and a port from 1994 is here.

One reads on various blogs the opinion that may be summarized thus: The top champagne houses make such huge quantities that their products amount to industrial swill and that the real champagnes come from small, hand-craft, artisanal houses.

Well, o.k., there may be some truth to that assessment. Even the best producers of labels known around the world — Taittinger, Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, Moet & Chandon, Louis Roederer, Perrier-Jouet, Bollinger — may stumble with their non-vintage bruts, their basic champagnes usually priced under $40. (I will say, however, that the non-vintage Pol Roger Cuvee Reserve, about $50, that we had with the recent Christmas breakfast — fried eggs, grits, country ham, red-eye gravy and biscuits — was as seductive as always.) While these heavily branded houses may dominate the market — and examples of a few tete-de-cuvee champagnes I have tried recently have been superb — hundreds of small independent houses exist whose products we rarely see in the United States.

Some I sampled recently have become my favorite champagnes, at least for the next few months; I bought all the bottles I could carry from a local store that seemed to be the only place in town that stocked them. These are products from “Champagne et Villages,” a negociant firm in Epernay run by Patrick Couvreur, who markets the products of a dozen or so small houses. The ones I tried are Jose Dhondt, Camille Saves and Godme Pere et Fils. Information about these producers and about Champagnes et Villages is difficult to find. I Googled like crazy and came up with very little, and except for Godme, nobody seems to have a website. Clive Coates mentions Champagnes et Villages favorably in An Encyclopedia of The Wines and Domaines of France (University of California Press, $60), calling the firm “a prime source for wines of terroir and diversity.”
The back labels tell us that these champagnes are brought into this country by USA Imports for Becky Wasserman Selections and The Miller Collection. Wasserman is a venerable and influential exporter based in Beaune, in the heart of Burgundy. The Miller Collection is a company run by Michael Miller in, of all places, the small town of Clarksville, Tennessee.

The champagnes I tried from this group are the Godme Brut Rose Grand Cru, non-vintage, the Jose Dhondt “Mes Vieilles Vignes” Brut Grand Cru, non-vintage, and the Camille Saves Brut 1998. These are champagnes of tremendous character, breeding, grip and power, though woven with, paradoxically, elegance and even delicacy. The ground and subsoil and strata from which the vines draw sustenance seem to resonate throughout these champagnes; they feel connected to the earth, yet they elevate us with balletic surges of tiny bubbles and ethereal nuance.

The rub is cost. Searching the internet brought few references to these products; prices mentioned ranged from about $45 to $60. I paid $60 to $70 — Ouch! — certainly relegating them to the special occasion category.

Are they worth the price? Whaddaya think? If I could get more, I would.
Other small houses whose products I esteem are Egly-Ouriet (try the Brut “Les Vignes de Vrigny,” non-vintage, made from pinot meunier grapes, $35-$45); Champagne Fleury (the Brut Millesime 1996 is wonderful, about $75); and, especially, the unfortunately rare Champagne David Leclapart, whose dazzlingly dry Cuvee L’Amateur Blanc de Blancs 2002 is like drinking glaciers composed by Chopin, all steely tinsel and tensile strength, $50-$55.

A few minutes ago I posted on KoeppelOnWine.com a “Featured Article” page that reviews 20 sparkling wines and champagnes, priced from cheap to mind-boggling and designed to fulfill every need you might have for those delightful and profound products. I mean, Christmas is right around the corner! New Year’s is right around the bend! Let our motto be: “We must have bubbles!”
Here’s the link to that page: http://www.koeppelonwine.com/Featured_Article.asp