Definition
A light sparkling wine, usually white and traditionally from the famous Champagne region of North-West France.
About
This celebrated sparkling wine always seems to be synonymous with ‘special occasion’ and ‘high status’. True Champagne comes only from the Champagne region in northeast France (see red area below), although many other countries have their own particular versions; spumante in Italy, Cava in Spain, Sekt in Germany and vin mousseux in other regions of France.
Taste and Appearance
Champagnes can range in color from pale gold to apricot blush. Their flavours can range from toasty to yeasty and from dry (no sugar added) to sweet. A sugar-wine mixture called a dosage added just before final corking determines how sweet a Champagne will be. The levels of sweetness indicated on the label are: brut (bone dry to almost dry-less than 1.5 percent sugar); extra sec or extra dry (slightly sweeter-1.2 to 2 percent sugar); sec (medium sweet-1.7 to 3.5 percent sugar); demi-sec (sweet-3.3 to 5 percent sugar); and doux (very sweet-over 5 percent sugar). The last two are considered dessert wines
How it’s made
Champagne is usually made from a blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes, all of which require warmer weather for optimum development and are grown on the chalky soil of the area. Chardonnay adds the elegance and finesse, Pinot Noir provides the backbone and Pinot Meunier an easy-to-drink fruitiness.
Champagne is typically a white wine even if it is produced by red grapes, because the juice is extracted from the grapes using a gentle process that minimises the length of time the juice spends in contact with the skins.
Good Champagne is expensive not only because it's made with premium grapes, but because it's made by what is known as the 'Méthode Champenoise'. This traditional method requires a second fermentation in the bottle as well as some 100 manual operations (some of which are mechanised today). Today many of the major champagne houses blend together as many as 30 – 40 base wines to create their blend, or cuvee.
Vintage champagnes are made from the best grapes of the harvest in a year when the chef de cave in the individual champagne house believes that the grapes are of a particularly high standard. Vintage champagnes must be aged for 3 years prior to their release.
Non-vintage champagnes make up 75 to 80% of those produced are usually produced in a house ‘style’, which is maintained by skilled house blending.
Rose champagnes are generally made by adding a small amount of red still wine to the cuvee, although the rose colour can be extracted from the skins by maceration of the juice with red wine skins. These wines are usually fairly full-bodied and full-flavoured and have a ‘salmon pink’ hue.
Bubbles
It is widely accepted that the smaller the bubbles the better the Champagne.
Styles
Blanc de Noirs champagnes are made entirely from the black Pinot Noir/Pinot Meunier grapes. Blanc de Blanc champagnes, which are less rich, more delicate and much lighter in colour are made entirely from the Chardonnay grape.
Serving Champagne
Champagne is usually served in a champagne flute, which characteristically has a long stem with a tall, narrow opening. Glasses should not be overfilled; flutes should be filled two thirds full.
Champagne is always served cold, at its best it is served at a temperature of 7 – 9 degrees C. Often the bottle is chilled in a bucket of ice and water before and after opening. Champagne buckets are made specifically for this purpose and often have a larger volume than standard wine coolers.
Classification
Villages of the Champagne region, of which there are approximately 270, and their land are classified according to the quality of the grapes produced. Grand Cru status is the top level, and only 17 villages have managed to achieve the 100% rating necessary for this. The next level is Premier Cru, for which a 90 – 99% rating is necessary.
Background
Dom Perignon, 17th-century cellarmaster of the Abbey of Hautvillers, is celebrated for developing the art of blending wines to create Champagnes, although whether he ‘invented’ it is debated. He is however credited for his work in preventing Champagne bottles and corks from exploding by using thicker bottles and tying the corks down with string. Even then, it's said that the venerable Dom Perignon lost half his Champagne through the bottles bursting.
The first commercial sparkling wine was produced in the Limoux area of Languedoc about 1535. They did not invent it; nobody knows who first made it, although the English make a reasonably good claim in that they added sugar and molasses to imported wine and bottled it.
The English claim is given some substance as they had developed sufficiently strong bottles to withstand the very high pressures created by fermentation. In the 1800s Champagne was noticeably sweeter than modern Champagne is today with the Russians preferring Champagne as sweet as 300 grams per litre. The trend towards drier Champagne began when Perrier-Jouët decided not to sweeten his 1846 vintage prior to exporting it to London. The designation Brut Champagne, the modern Champagne, was created for the British in 1876.
Top Marques
An organization called the Syndicat des Grandes Marques, represents around thirty Grandes Marques, literally meaning ‘top brands’. These include:
Some of these brands produce a premium marque called either cuvee de prestige or cuvee speciale. These include Perrier-Jouet’s Belle Epoque, Grand-Siecle by Laurent Perrier, Cristal from Louis Roederer and Grande Dame from Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin. |
