Uncorked: Your Guide to the World of Cheap Champagne

By Brian Cognato > University of Maryland, College Park | Photos > Jeff Kitson

With the big night nearly upon us, now’s the time to make what may be the single most important decision for your New Year’s Eve party: what to drink. Choose well, and you will be cheered, and cheered, and cheered again by your thankful, boisterous and tipsy friends. Choose poorly and watch your hard-earned dollars go to waste in icy buckets of social anxiety. It’s easy to get caught in the hype and go overboard for your New Year’s Eve party, but remember, we college students are a simple breed, and a small investment can go a long way.

To help you choose the right booze for your New Year’s bash, we here at College Magazine organized our own champagne tasting, with all the champagnes sampled under 15 bucks. We gathered a small focus group of eight students, ranging from a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to a senior at NYU. The tasters sampled every champagne blind, one twice to see if increasing drunkenness had any effect. We also used one ringer, a $15.99 bottle of honest-to-goodness French champagne, to see if a couple extra dollars might make any difference. The tasters were given an elaborate scoring methodology to precisely determine the relative cost-benefit vale of each drink. They, being college students drinking champagne out of red Solo cups in your humble writer’s basement, completely ignored it. They did, however, offer ample and descriptive feedback.

5. Barefoot Bubbly Extra Dry - Retail price: about $9. If this study proves nothing else, it proves that dry champagne [for the non-vinoculturally inclined, “dry” is the opposite of sweet in wines] is not for the college crowd. Commented Josh, a senior at Boston University, “I felt like yarfing before the first sip.” Jenn, a senior at Immaculatta College, concurs: “This should be like $4. [I] probably wouldn’t even drink enough to want to get drunk.”

4. Pierre Sparr Brut – Retail price: about $17. The ringer. Our survey was resoundingly clear on one point. Sweetness, far more than price, determines the popularity of champagne. This champagne, from the Alsace region of France (and so, technically the only “champagne” of the bunch, the rest being formally only “sparkling wines”) was in the dead center on the sweetness spectrum and easily the most expensive, but received unenthusiastic responses. One taster who consistently sided with the classier samples, Nicole from Carnegie Mellon, correctly identified it as a Brut, thought it was “something to sip pleasantly,” but she also thought our second place finisher tasted like “a used cherry condom,” so take her advice at your own risk. The others all thought it was bland, but drinkable.

3. Martini and Rossi Prosecco - Retail price: about $11. Even blander than the Pierre Sparr. Three different tasters thought that it tasted diluted with tonic water, and a fourth compared it to ginger ale. It actually made Xavier, a 21-year-old former LaSalle attendee now in the Navy, physically shudder. The only thing that keeps it above the Pierre Sparr is the 6 bucks you can save and use to buy something stronger.

2. Martini and Rossi Asti – Retail price: about $10.99.The single most important lesson from this experiment: Go sweet. Then add sugar. Then mix it with something sweeter. This mildly sweet Italian white redeemed Martini and Rossi’s name, but still fell far short of the final crown. The smell was off-putting. Stacy, a senior at Ursinus College, said it reminded her of old people, while Xavier compared it to his jock after a five-mile run. Once the tasters got over the smell though, the response was generally positive. Said Sam, from NYU, “Extremely drinkable, if you hold your nose.

1. Andre Spumante – Retail price: about $5.99. Was there ever any doubt? Andre’s the Natty of champagne, but tastier. And much more girl-friendly. We even had the tasters sample the Andre twice, without telling them that one entrant would be repeated, and, if anything, the respondents responded more enthusiastically the second time, presumably because of the mediocre wines in between and maybe a slight buzz. Jenn said she would “definitely drink this to get drunk” (Take note, you men of Immaculatta. All three of you), and Sam said simply, “Want more now!” The guys were less enthusiastic, with Xavier commenting that it was “drinkable, but not all night.” Still, they saw the girls’ reaction and upped their scores accordingly. Joe, a senior at Canisius College in Buffalo, drank the stuff all night. And we didn’t even go for the flavored kind.