The problem with the wine industry in America [mainly outside of California] is the lack of experience as well as the choice of many regional varietals. In this, we get many wines that are from local wineries, but that lack the sophistication, if not taming, of more established vines and their fruits. It doesn't matter if you have great techniques in making some wines, but are using somewhat abrasive stock.

I have had wines from New Hope Winery before, and I praise both their Blackberry and their Raspberry wines, but have yet to find anything great about anything else of theirs.

This brings us to their Brut sparkling wine offering, to which the first person told me was made with 'champagne' grapes. That wasn't enough for me, so I engaged another person there who told me that I could talk to the winemaker, but that this was his baby.

This wine has great tiny bubbles, lots of them even, which is a sign of good production, but the taste is not there. The color is a nice golden yellow, and the taste is reminiscent of apples and straw (I know, who the hell has tasted straw lately), but the flavor is too muted as to be worthy of the $20.99 price tag.

Another problem that arises is that of the cost of domestic production versus the cost of production in larger wineries as well as larger foreign wineries. I would say that there are some other wineries that would beat the pants off of New Hope without even trying, but that maybe New Hope is trying to hard to produce a bevy of wines instead of just being good at five wines. While this sparkling wine is made in a great fashion, it doesn't seem like that base stock (the juice) is really up to snuff. I would love to see them take a juice from someone else and then make is sparkling. I think that they could do wonders with their raspberry and blackberry wines.