Great Wine Made Simple - Andrea Immer [58]
Second fermentation in the bottle The completed wine blend goes into the bottle with a liqueur of yeast and sugar, and is capped with a crown cap (like that on a beer bottle). The liqueur starts a second fermentation, yielding two by-products—carbon dioxide bubbles and yeast.
Aging Beneath the streets of Reims and Epernay, Champagne’s two main towns, are miles of cool corridors burrowed out of the pure chalk subsoil, dug during Roman times. You will see them when you visit, because that is where the bottles lie to ferment the second time and then age. (Bring a sweater. They are the perfect place for wine as they naturally maintain a constant cool temperature and high humidity.) By law, the nonvintage wines must rest there for at least fifteen months, and the vintage wines at least three years. The longer the aging time, the more complex and “yeasty” the wine becomes. Yeasty, bready, biscuity, and nutty are all words that tasters use to describe the wonderful scent and taste that results from this long aging time. This tasting will illustrate this flavor.
Disgorging After aging, what remains in the bottle along with the wonderful flavor and bubbles is a sediment of yeast cells left over from the second fermentation. If the sediment stayed in the bottle, the Champagne would be cloudy. To remove it, the wineries twist and shake each bottle, working the sediment into the neck in a process called remuage (rehmoo-AHJ, or “riddling” in English). The neck of the bottle is then frozen, capturing the sediment in a plug of ice that is popped out by flipping off the crown cap that was put on after blending. The bottle is then topped up, corked, and labeled.
Voilà! The Méthode Champenoise makes the real thing, on which virtually all other quality bubblies in the world are modeled. The lower prices of other sparkling wines can be further explained as follows:
Region of origin Some sparklers are made using the same intensive process as Champagne but come from regions with less notoriety and demand, or where land is more plentiful (which lowers production costs). Cava (KAH-vuh) from Spain and many California sparkling wines fit this description. They are good-quality alternatives when French Champagne is not in your budget (big parties, weddings, etc.).
Production process Other sparklers are made with less labor-intensive, more mechanized techniques that result in cost savings. The result is a less complex style that is good for making punches and sparkling wine drinks (mimosa, Bellini, and Kir royale are all classics). If you are going to add ingredients that dominate the flavor anyway, why pay the premium for true French Champagne?
WINE TASTING
Champagne
Our first tasting will allow you to compare Champagne house styles—light and elegant versus powerful and yeasty—so that you can see the style differences and identify your preference. The second tasting will compare the paradigm, French Champagne, to a California sparkler made with the same style and process. Another nifty tasting that you might want to do (maybe with friends to share the cost) would compare Champagne types—brut nonvintage, vintage, rosé, and luxury, for example—to see the differences. Have fun!
(Note: In many of the tastings in this chapter, I will not comment on the appearance unless the comparison is especially noteworthy, since by now you will know roughly what look to expect from most of these wines and can do this tasting step on your own.)
Champagne House-Style Comparison
French Champagne versus California Sparkling Wine
This is a fun comparison, because several Champagne houses also produce California sparkling wines—meaning you could actually compare French versus Californian from the same winemaking “family,” so to speak. As you do the tasting, keep in mind the distinction between Old World and New World styles—subtle versus fruit-forward.
Bordeaux
I consider Champagne and Bordeaux to be the “aristocrats” of the French paradigm wines because, in addition to their historical and current