POP!

POP! We all love the sound! Sparkling wine (any that bubbles when poured in a glass) is festive and fun. Most people tend to only associate drinking Bubbly when celebrating special occasions, but c'mon - it's just fizzy wine, and we encourage you do drink it more often. Champagne is actually the one wine that is appropriate to enjoy around the clock from Mimosas to dessert.

A fine sparkling wine is more than just a sum of it's parts. It doesn't taste like its predecessor base wine plus gas. The longer a wine rests on its lees (polite winespeak for dead yeast cells), the more flavot it will pick up from them. This is how Champagne gains its unique and complex bready, biscuity, doughy, and yeasty flavors.

We have a tendency to call all sparkling wines "Champagne," which is actually incorrect. "Champagnes only truly come from the champagne region of France everything else is just sparkling wine."

Even if you don't like Champagne, try a few different bubblies. Sparkling wines vary in many aspects, mostly because they can be produced anywhere. They can be any color and range in degrees of sweetness, fizziness, and alcoholic strength.

The bubbles in sparkling wine are carbon dioxide. While held under pressure, the gas is trapped in solution. It is released when the bottle is opened, and small bubbles arise to liven your palate. The character of this foam varies: bubbes can be aggressive or subtle and persistant or soon flat. Fine bubbles are of higher quality than coarse ones, such as you find in soft drinks.

How Sparkling Wines are Made

All sparkling wines start out as still wines and undergo one of many methods to trap gas in the wine. A number of different methods are employable, all varying in cost, complication, and quality of the final wine.

"Traditional Method" or "Methode Champenoise" is the finest of these methods. This is how French Champagne is produced, and a significant proportion of winemakers elsewhere choose to employ the same meticulous techniques.

• It all starts with a base wine of fermented grape juice.
• Then more yeast cells and some sugar to fuel them are added to that bottled wine.
• The 2nd fermentation that ensues produces CO2, which is kept dissolved under pressure.

Now, that wasn't so complicated, but no one wants to drink sparkling wine with big nasty dead yeast cells floating around in it.

Riddling is a cumbersome process employed to remove the lees, or dead yeast cells. This is extremely laborious by hand and now done often by machine. The bottles are gradually shaken and tilted upside down to move deposits down into the neck of the bottles.

Disgorgement and Dosage removes the deposits and tops off the bottle. Producers next freeze the necks of the bottles and unstopper them. The wine's pressure pushes out the frozen chunk of sediment. Bottles are then topped up with a mixure of sugary wine, called the "dosage."

Dosage allows the sweetness of the final sparkling wine to be altered.

The label on a bottle of sparkling wine will state which style the wine is. Brut is the standard, but here's where all the others fall in the scale of bone dry to dessert sweet:

Ultra Brut/Brut Natural/Brut Sauvage - are all names for no sugar in the dosage wine. These are bone dry, austere, and lean.
Brut - the standard for dry Champagne. Just a bit of sugar in the dosage rounds out the wine‚s edges, but you cannot taste its presence.
Extra Dry - still dry but tastes rounded and fruitier than Brut
Sec- slightly sweet
Demi Sec -sweet
Doux - quite sweet

Other inexpensive methods of producing bubbly use pressurized tanks, filtration, and rebottling. The Traditional method gives you a bottle of sparkling wine that was fermented in its own bottle.

Where Sparkling Wines are produced:

France - While Sparkling wines are produced elsewhere in France, such as cremants from the Loire and Clairette de Die from the Rhone, Champagne is definitely the most famous of all sparkling wines.

Champagne -Irrefutably the finest sparkling wines in the world come from Champagne. True Champagne will always taste different from other sparkling wines, even those made from the same grape varietals using the same methods. This is because Champagne has a very unique terrior. It is a cool, northerly growing region with very chalky soil. Champagne is made from a blend of 3 grapes: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Menieur.

As you know, wineries around the world must declare a vintage. The wine in a bottle must come from one harvest. Yet Champagne‚s winemaking laws are different. Champagne producers aim for a consistent, reliable house style indistinguishable from year to year. They blend up to several hundred base wines to achieve this goal. Only in the best years do they declare a vintage and bottle champagne solely from one harvest.

The many styles of Champagne:

Non-Vintage - Basic, entry-level Champagne representing a producer's style. Does not improve with bottle age.
Vintage - Champagne made from a single harvest. Only made in the best years, vintage Champagne is more upscale and will display unique characteristics of a particular year. Released ready to drink, but will improve with proper cellaring.
Prestige Cuvee- luxury champagnes costing upwards of $100/bottle. Every major Champagne house has one. A few of the most famous are such as Moet & Chandon's Dom Perignon, Roederer's Cristal, and Veuve Clicquot's La Grande Dame.
Rose- Pink Champagne made form a blend of white and red base wines
Blanc de Blanc/Blanc de Chardonnay- Champagne made from 100% Chardonnay
Blanc de Noirs - golden champagne made from the red grapes Pinot Noir and Pinot Meuinier


Spain - Cava is Spain's own traditional sparkling wine. It is unique and not trying to emulate champagne. Made form the local grapes Cava is always a good bargain

Italy- Prosecco is the traditional Italian Sparkling wine. It also is unique and not trying to be Champagne. Produced from local grape varieties, Prosecco is lighter and fruitier than Champagne. You can expect to get a good bottle of Prosecco for around $10-$15 a bottle.

California - Californian bubblies are made to stylistically emulate Champagne, and a number of producers are actually owned and operated by major Champagne houses

Elsewhere - Sparkling wine can be made anywhere grapes are grown. Washington State, South America, South Africa, and Australia (Sparkling Shiraz!) have all joined in.

Pairing bubbly with Food

Honestly, bubbly goes with everything. If you need one wine to carry you through multiple courses, it is always an excellent choice. Sparkling wine is an elegant and traditional apertif.

Of course, Champagne and caviar is a classic match with a celebratory aura.

You simply must try sushi with sparkling wine - no tradition here, but they're extraordinary together! A sweeter Champagne is nice to offset spicy wasabi. One of our favorite pairings is brut sparkling wine with Japanese bagel roll (smoked salmon and cream cheese with toasted sesame seeds).

How to open a Bottle of Sparkling Wine

This takes some practice, and you should always use caution. Remember, the contents of that bottle are being held under 5-6 ATM pressure, and the cork will want to shoot off. But don't let it! We don't want you to lose an eye, and when a bottle foams over, all you‚re left with is ≤ a bottle of flat wine. Neither is enjoyable.

1. Make sure the bottle is well-chilled and don't jostle it around.

2. Remove the foil capsule

3. Pointing the bottle away from you, other people, and your chandelier, you‚re your hand or thumb on top the metal cap and untwist the wire cage. (Be sure you‚re untwisting, not twisting it more or it may snap off.)

4. Keeping the bottle still, and holding the cork by its wire cage, slowly turn the cork. Don't pull! It will push itself out.

5. POP!

6. Pour a glass of Sparkling wine only halfway, as it will foam up. Then top it off, and enjoy!
   

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