Lessons Learned or the Top 10 Things to Know about Sparkling Wines (to sound like a wine geek!):
1. Sparkling wines encompass more than just Champagne. The type includes French Crémant, Spanish Cava, Italian Prosecco, Lambrusco, and Moscato d'Asti, as well as sparkling wines produced in "New World" locales such as the USA and Australia. It's a big world out there!
2. Sparkling wines come in different levels of sweetness (depending on the dosage):
- Extra Brut or Extra Dry
- Brut or Dry
- Demi-Sec or Medium Dry
- Doux or Sweet.
3. Sparkling wines achieve their effervescence from some form of secondary fermentation. This fermentation is achieved by adding a sugar/wine/yeast mixture to the wine after its initial fermentation (the tirage).
4. Sparkling wines are not created equally. They arrive at their sparkling finish by different means:
- Méthode Champenoise or Traditional Method - the tirage is added to the bottle (Champagne, Cremant, Cava, many "New World")
- Charmat Methode or Metodo Italiano - the secondary fermentation occurs in a pressurized tank (Prosecco, Lambrusco, Moscato d'Asti)
- Injection Method - carbon dioxide is pumped into a tank of wine (usually, low-quality wines).
5. Sparkling wines are not all made from the same grapes:
- Champagne traditionally contains Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier (a Blanc de Blancs contains only Chardonnay; a Blanc de Noirs contains only black grapes)
- Crémant can contain Pinot Blanc, Noir and Gris
- Cava contains Paredo, Macabeo and Xarel-lo
- Italian varieties are easy - the name is the varietal, e.g. Prosecco is prosecco, Lambrusco is Lambrusco, Moscato d'Asti is Moscato, etc.
- "New World" emulations tend to contain the traditional Champagne grape varietals.
6. To highlight a vintage or not - that is the question. Most of the sparkling wines you have likely encountered are non-vintage (NV). This practice is completely different from the still wine industry. Generally, NV wines are made from a blend of grapes form different years. This ensures a consistent product over different growing seasons. Vintage champagnes are produced from a single harvest and are usually created in celebration of great harvests. (Vintage is usually more expensive and harder to find...)
7. The first major historical figure in Champagne's history, Dom Pérignon, actually spent most of his life in the 1600s attempting to remove bubbles from his wine, not add them. The bubbles were a pesky side product of Champagnes cold temperatures - the wines wouldn't fully ferment before the winter and so a secondary fermentation would occur in the summer causing yucky bubbles! Dom Pérignon developed rigorous production methods which greatly improved the quality of the wine, and the predictability of bubbles. Finally, Champagne, in his day, was actually a light red color, not the straw-hued wine we quaff today. By the 1700's, Champagne had become integral to the French high society scene and many of the major houses we are familiar with today started in that century. The Russians, also, were infatuated with the wine. At the time, the secondary fermentation that occurred in the bottles would leave yeast detritus in the bottom of the bottles that would have to be avoided when it was consumed. After the French Revolution, Veuve Clicquot was responsible for introducing the riddling table which helped eliminate the debris in the bottles. This, along with new corking and cage techniques, was the final step that really pushed Champagne into the mainstream. In the 1800s, Spain and Italy began purposely producing sparkling wines as well, attempting to emulate France's success (they had had similar accidentally sparkling wines throughout history too). In the late 1800s, Louis Roederer created Cristal for the Czar of Russia - the bottle was of a new design and the wine was of the highest quality. The celebrity cult wine was born!
8. Champagnes are generally produced by négociants who buy grapes from producers all over the region and use them to produce the non-vintage wines we are mostly familiar with. This allows for large production of consistent quality, but is, to my taste, quite boring. I have recently come across another "type" of Champagne which has been gathering popularity for the last decade - Single Grower Producer (SGP) wines. The SGPs tend to use only the grapes they produce on their land to create slightly more funky and unique wines that tend to be a better expression of terroir. Their wines are low production and much more dependent on good growing seasons, though they do often produce NV wines. As a result, they are harder to find, but well worth the effort! One of my favorites is listed in the Sparkling Wine Tasting - 12 08 2009 entry.
9. The large champagne houses will offer Cuvées de Prestige or Tête de Cuvées. These are intended to be their top of the line, extremely expensive, often vintage, wines. Dom Pérignon, from Moët & Chandon, La Grande Dame, from Veuve Clicquot, and Cristal from Louis Roederer are great examples - expressions of the wine as a celebratory, status symbol.
10. While no two wines are alike, there are some more common aromas and characteristics of sparkling wines:
- Champagne - Toasty, biscuit, floral, spruce, fresh and clean
- Cava - Earthy, toasty, citrus, and sourdough
- Prosecco - Crisp, lemony, stone fruit, fresh and simple
- Lambrusco - Earthy, black fruit, and slight tannins
- Moscato d'Asti - Strawberries, sweet and frothy
P.S. Rosé Champagnes are a personal fave - I find them to be a bit more approachable and fruit forward, while maintaining the classic dryness of the region. They are produced from a blend of red and white grapes. The pink color can be the result of the saignée méthode which entails leaving the juice in contact with the dark colored grapes after crushing them long enough to color the wine. A cheaper method is to simply blend a small amount of finished red wine with a white wine. Champagne is one of the few regions that actually allows the blending method; however, I prefer the saignée méthode. Because it is less common, Champagne producers will proudly label their wines for easy identification!
