Champagne is great, but if you really want to get in the Valentine's Day spirit (and avoid being a cliché), sparkling red wines are the way to go. Served slightly chilled, they're versatile enough to go with food, dessert, or just on their own -- and they tend to be incredibly affordable, too. We hit up our favorite local wine shop and asked our buddies there for their top five recommendations, because we want to save you from trial and error. After all, we wouldn't want you to get dumped on Valentine's Day for choosing a lousy wine.
Great news: The two sparkling red wines that topped our taste test are the cheapest ones. While logic may tell you to buy twice as much of it, we don't recommend getting wasted on Valentine's Day, so maybe just spend the extra cash on flowers instead.
Check out the results of our tasting below!
As always, this taste test is in no way influenced or sponsored by the products included.
This story appears in Issue 47 of our weekly iPad magazine, Huffington, in the iTunes App store, available Friday, May 3.