The Carboniste Sparkling Albarino “Gomes Vineyard” 2021 is a delightful drink. Albariño’s white peach, lemon, tangerine character shines in this traditional-method sparkling. Along with freshness and verve, its short secondary fermentation in bottle (just 4 months) adds a lovely kiss of creamy texture. With a very low 5 G/L dosage, it’s very dry…just enough sweetness to lift the wine’s “exoticness.” I’d drink this any day and twice on Sundays. A “Very Good Value” because I dub it an “everyday wine” and a Wine Factor of 1. I believe that’s where Carboniste wants their wine: not just for weekends and special occasions.
Carboniste makes a variety of sparkling wines out of different grapes (Albarino, Pinot Grigio, Pinot Noir bottlings in their current release with more to come). I like the Carboniste wines I’ve tasted a lot, and I really like their forward-thinking attitude of understanding the changing wine market and creating artisan sparkling wines to satisfy these customers.
I like how they describe themselves: “C A R B O N I S T E is a dedicated producer of modern sparkling wines. Our goal is to discover a new terroir for California sparkling wines. Champagne is from France. CARBONISTE is California!”