Sparkling wine substitutes

The three most widely stocked sparkling wines after Champagne, each dry when labelled brut.

Best for

mimosas and spritzes, punch, sabayon, pan sauces

Fully interchangeable for almost every purpose, with small differences worth knowing. Cava and Cremant are fermented in the bottle like Champagne, so they carry a faintly bready, toasty, almond character and tend to be crisper. Prosecco is fermented in a tank and stays fruitier, tasting of pear, green apple and white flowers, and usually carries slightly more sugar, so a spritz or mimosa made with it reads sweeter and a reduced pan sauce comes out a shade rounder. Balance that with a squeeze of lemon or a little less juice in the drink. In a cooked dish the differences are essentially undetectable.

Sauvignon blanc, pinot grigio, picpoul, dry riesling or unoaked chardonnay.

Best for

risotto, mussels and clams, pan sauces, poaching fish

A complete substitute for every heated dish, and worth understanding why so you can stop worrying about it. Carbonation survives about ten seconds in a hot pan, so it plays no part in a finished risotto, mussel pot, braise or beurre blanc. What sparkling wine is actually contributing is acidity, light fruit and alcohol to carry aroma, and any crisp dry white brings all three. Most sparkling wine is higher in acid than the average still white, so if the dish tastes a little flat, finish with a squeeze of lemon. Avoid heavily oaked whites, which push vanilla and butter into a sauce that should read clean.

A rebuilt fizz for drinks, spritzes and punches, using still wine for flavour and soda for bubbles.

Best for

spritzes, punch and sangria, mimosas, cocktails

The best answer when you need something to sparkle in a glass and only have a still bottle. The mouthfeel is not identical, because sparkling wine's bubbles are finer and more persistent while soda gives bigger, faster bubbles that fade in a few minutes, but in a spritz over ice with fruit nobody notices. Keep everything very cold and add the soda last, poured down the side of the glass. In a large punch bowl, add the soda at the very moment of serving rather than an hour ahead. Do not use tonic water unless you want the bitterness of quinine, and do not use flavoured seltzer in a savoury recipe.

A fermented apple drink with natural carbonation, sold dry, off-dry or sweet.

Best for

pork and chicken, mussels, punch, braising cabbage and sausages

An underrated swap, especially with pork, chicken, mussels, sausages and cabbage, where it is arguably better than sparkling wine. It brings the same fizz, similar acidity and a comparable alcohol level, plus an apple character and a faint tannic grip from the skins. In a cooked dish the sauce tastes distinctly of apple and comes out a little rounder and slightly sweeter than a wine version. Buy the bottle marked dry, since off-dry ciders carry real sugar that concentrates in a reduction. In a mimosa it makes a good drink, just not one that tastes like a mimosa.

The alcohol-free option that keeps the bubbles and the celebratory look.

Best for

alcohol-free toasts, non-alcoholic mimosas, punch, cooking for children

Good for toasts, non-alcoholic mimosas and punch, and workable in a cooked sauce. The issue is always sugar: these juices carry several times as much as a brut sparkling wine, so straight out of the bottle they taste like fizzy dessert. Lemon juice pulls them back toward dry, and a splash of white wine vinegar does the same in a savoury sauce. What you cannot replace is the alcohol, which dissolves and carries aromatic compounds, so a juice-based sauce smells and tastes flatter and more one-dimensional. In a reduction, expect it to catch and caramelise sooner than wine would.

The right swap when sparkling wine was in a tempura or fritter batter purely for lift.

Best for

tempura, fish and chip batter, fritters, onion rings

A genuinely different use worth separating out. In a batter, sparkling wine is not there for flavour, it is there because the dissolved gas expands in hot oil and gives a light, lacy crust, and because it is cold enough to slow gluten development. Ice cold club soda does that job exactly, and cold lager does it with a pleasant yeasty flavour. The rules are the same either way: keep the liquid fridge cold, mix the batter with a fork until barely combined and still lumpy, and use it within a few minutes, because the bubbles escape and the crust goes heavy if it sits.