The Marbella Sparkling Wine List

Sparkling wines and Champagne compliment our cuisine so nicely. The refreshing crispness and well balanced acidity of these festive wines help to showcase the flavors of Spain. In fact, many of our guests share a bottle of bubbly for no other reason than the taste. Although Champagne is considered something you drink on special occasions, it nevertheless is an outstanding accompaniment to food. And a glass with dessert is gastronomically appropriate too! A toast, in Spain, is practically always drunk with cava, the Spanish sparkling wine made by the champagne method.

Sparkling Wine

001 Freixenet Cordon Negro Spain 18.95
002 Martini & Rossi Asti Spumante Italy 25.95
003 Segura Viudas Brut Heradad Reserva Spain 27.95
004 Mumm Brut Prestige Napa 41.95
005 Gloria Ferrer Blanc de Noir Sonoma 38.95

Champagne

006 Moet & Chandon White Star 52.95
007 Roederer Brut Premier 65.95
008 Mumm, Cordon Rouge 79.95
009 Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label Brut 99.95
010 Taitinger Cuvee Prestige Rose 99.95
011 Perrier Jouet, Fleur du Champagne 160.95
012 Moet & Chandon, Dom Perignon 185.95
013 Moet & Chandon, Dom Perignon Rose 285.95
 

You don't have to be celebrating a special occasion to enjoy the refreshing bubbles and taste of a Sparkling Wine or Champagne. An evening at Marbella is reason enough. The crisp clean taste is pleasure on your palette.

Many Spaniards consider Sparkling Wines to be the perfect accompaniment to a spicy meal. While still other Europeans insist on the bubbly with dessert.

We have very good Sparkling Wines starting at $18.95 a bottle. However if you are celebrating an event worth remembering, choose from classics from Perrier Jouet, Veuve Clicquot,  Roederer or Moet & Chandon. Our Sparkling Wine List sparkles with gems from California, France, Italy and of course, Spain. Don't order a bottle of Champagne to impress your friends, order this liquid luxury to impress your tongue.

Ask Jesus About The Wine List!

Our host at Marbella, jesus is always happy to answer any questions you may have.

Perhaps you want to know the vintage of a particular wine, or what temperature you should serve Champagne?

The section of this web site called "Ask Jesus " gives you the opportunity to quiz Senor Jesus on food, wine, service etiquette, restaurant policies and the Spanish culture. Are you curious about Jesus's favorite champagne, entree or dessert? Go ahead and find out. Jesus has "mucho" fun answering your questions, so don't be shy, feel free to ask as many questions as you like. He will reply as soon as possible.

Paella and Champagne have a lot in common as they are both designed to exploit the senses. Our Paella Vallenciana offers a wide range of exotic and varied flavors, but it is also visually stimulating. There is a spectrum of colors and delicate arrangements that please the eye even before the palate is engaged.

Champagne does exactly the same thing. It is exciting, it implies celebration, it tempts us in the glass with that steady stream of bubbles and it welcomes the nose with limitless aromas and even a slight tickle. On the palate it explodes with that exhilarating "fizziness" and then it rewards our good taste with layers upon layers of flavor.

Combine Champagne & Spain's famous Paella and you pleasantly engage four of the five senses: Sight, smell, touch, and taste. How can you lose?

The History of Spain's Sparkling Wines (Cava)

After France, Spain is the second major producer of traditional
method sparkling wine. The main grape varieties used to develop the cava wines are the Macabeu, Xarel.lo, Parellada and Chardonnay varieties.

They are characterized by the primary aroma and obtains their delicate bouquet by the wise harmonisation of the wines through a combination of different varieties of "vitis vinifera"., that gives its joyful taste, minute bubbles and a fresh, expression.

They must be a minimum of nine months left to age in cellars. Sparkling "Gran Reserva" wine – remain in the cellars for a period of at least thirty months and have secondary aromas arising from their prolonged ageing process in contact with the yeast during the second fermentation.

Like champagne, cava comes in different degrees of sweetness. The following are the categories according to sugar content, although the characteristics of different wines may mean one manufacturer's seco tastes as sweet as another's semi-seco:

Brut Nature - (no added sugar) up to 3 g per litre
Extra Brut - up to 6 g per litre
Brut - up to 15 g per litre
Extra seco - between 12 and 20 g per litre
Seco - between 17 and 35 g per litre
Semi-seco - between 33 and 50 g per litre
Dulce - more than 50 g per litre

You will also see terms like Brut de Brut (very dry), Brut Gran Reserva Vintage... It is often thought that brut cava is somehow superior to the others, which is not true, although it may be more versatile. Because of the custom of saving the cava for the toast at weddings and other social occasions, it is also thought that cava is only suitable for the end of the meal, which is emphatically not the case.

Cava, according to the wine critic Carlos Delgado, is "one of the few wines which can be drunk throughout a meal, simply by moving from brut to dulce, as long as there is no strong-flavoured meat dish." Delgado, somewhat snobbishly, also considers that "cava is always preferable towards the beginning of the meal," an elitist opinion perhaps related with the association between cava and (expensive) seafood.

Cava is usually made by the coupage method, whereby must (grape juice) from different varieties of grape is subjected to the first fermentation, then mixed until the blend is consistent with the wine to be produced. The advantage of this is that a particular brand of cava will taste the same every year. It also means that most cava does not carry a year on the bottle, as must from different years is often used.

Some are always made using the same grape variety, in which case the year will be indicated on the bottle: these are superior and evidently more expensive cavas. After the coupage, the wine is put into bottles and yeast and sugar added. It is then left for the second fermentation and aging. This lasts a minimum of nine months and may be up to three or four years, for a very special cava.

A process called "riddling and disgorging" is then carried out. The bottles are stored nearly upside down so that the sediment settles on the corks and riddled, turned, for a period of thirty days. "Disgorging" is when the corks are removed, together with the sediment (usually with the help of a freezing process).

Expedición, "passing liquor," a blend of the same wine as that in the bottle and others, together with the required amount of sugar, is then added in order to replace the lost wine and make the final flavor. Evidently, this process needs to be carried out very quickly. New corks are then put in and fastened on with the wire clasp before the bottles are labeled.

Cava is sold ready for drinking and the "riddling and disgorging" process means that the fermentation process is halted. Cava does not improve with being kept, indeed it deteriorates with age: buy it, store upright in a cool, not cold, place, for as little time as possible, and drink it, preferably in the same week.

Remember that the sweeter the cava, the cooler it needs to be served: a brut nature can be served practically at room temperature, but a semi-seco should be well chilled.

At the end of the last century, Catalunya and other wine growing areas in Spain imported Champagne techniques for the production of sparkling wine and today, tens of millions of bottles of Spanish sparkling wine are being sold all over the world.

That is because Spanish sparkling wines have achieved a great reputation that reflects a long tradition of centuries since the introduction of the wine making process by the Roman Empire, two thousand years ago.

In Spain, there are many areas where sparkling wine is produced, but there is only one Appellation of Origin which is called "Cava" and gives its name to the sparlkling wine produced there. Cava is a sparkling wine made using the "Champenoise Method", This method is the only one used under the Appellation of Origin Cava, but it is also used in other areas in Spain outside the marked area for Cava.

The Cava starts out life like almost any other white wine. What turns it into cava is the second fermentation which takes place in the bottle. The base wine is bottled, with additional sugars and yeast and given a provisional cap.

Then the wine ferments in the bottles until all the yeast and sugar is used up. The product of this process is Carbon Dioxide (which gives it its sparkling quality). The bottles are left to age in cellars. Small amount of Rose sparkling wine is also produced.

The origin of Cava is associated to the splendor of Catalan viticulture in the middle of XIXth century and to the Champagne renown towards the end of XVIIIth century. The studies of microbiology carried out by Louis Pasteur applied to wine, involved a control of the second fermentation in the bottle and the discovery of cork allowed to avoid the losing of bubbles produced in wine. The traditional method or Champenoise was born this way.

In XIXth century some families from Sant Sadurní d’Anoia started to investigate that new technique of elaboration applied to vineyards on the area. As a result of their studies and attempts vinculated to the prestigious Institut Agrícola Català de Sant Isidre, they chose the autochthonous varieties of white grape. Cava was born consequently achieving its own peculiar identity different from any other sparkling wine of quality.

In 1872 Josep Raventós i Fatjó, from the historical house Codorniu, elaborates the first 3.000 bottles of Cava following the traditional method of second fermentation in bottle. It is his son and heir, Don Manuel Raventós i Domenech, who initiates the expansion and consolidation of the enterprise. Other producers from the town start also their elaboration and Sant Sadurní d’Anoia becomes de main capital of Cava.

Along the decade of 1920, Cava was already consolidated into the Spanish market fact culminating in expansion in the 1960 decade and an international consolidation in the 1980 decade.