Wine news December 30, 2015

The Chicago Tribune on inexpensive Spanish wine. "Although the wines of Navarra are not as well known as the Camino or Pamplona, they should not be overlooked. What you get from Navarra is a variety of solid wines at a lower cost than the wines from more-famous Spanish locales."

Mike Dunn in the Sacramento Bee reflects on 2015 in wine.

The Telegraph looks at a study that shows winemakers are lying about the alcohol percentages in wine. "Academics at the University of California took samples from nearly 100,000 bottles of wine across the world and discovered that the alcohol content in nearly 60 per cent was an average of 0.42 per cent higher than stated on the label."

Bloomberg on 8 ways the wine world will change in 2016. "Once embraced solely by a tiny purist fringe, “natural” wine is poised to attract a much wider audience, especially in small, trendy (as well as high-end) restaurants with curious sommeliers."

Jamie Goode thinks about "naturalness" in wine. "I love grower Champagne, which inevitably uses some cultured yeasts for the second fermentation. I don’t want to give that up. Sometimes I’m in the mood for cloudy Pet-Nat, sometimes not."

Food & Wine on how to saber a bottle of Champagne. "Sabering Champagne has become fashionable, which is surprising for a custom that originally had its heyday among French cavalry officers during the Napoleonic wars (you’re on a horse; you want to open a bottle of bubbly; you are très chic; of course you use a sword)."