Originally published on July 14, 2009.
Our self-declared Sparkling Month continues with another 3-Pack featuring three different sparkling wines make using the traditional method, a.k.a. Method Champenoise, a.k.a. the same way Champange is made.
Get three bottles for $55.99 – the price of 1 mid-priced bottle of Champagne:
- Lucien Albrecht Cremant d’Alsace Blanc de Blancs NV (Alsace, France)
- Francois Pinon Vouvray NV Brut (Vouvray, Loire, France)
- J Vineyards Cuveé 20 NV (Russian River, California)
Read all about them on the store site.
And here, you can read all about Method Champenoise. We’re going to get a little technical, so don’t be scared.
Method Champenoise is one method by which those bubbles get into the bottle. There are other ways to make this happen, but Method Champenoise is the most time consuming and adds the most complexity to the final juice. But before getting into that, we need to understand the basics of fermentation.
In science speak: C6H12O6 → 2C2H5OH + 2CO2
In normal speak: sugar (which you find in ripe grapes) + yeast (which isn’t noted in the fancy equation) = alcohol + carbon dioxide (a gas, or if trapped, bubbles!)
Now, on to Method Champenoise, step by step:
- Make the base wine: In simplest terms, take ripe grapes, crush, add yeast (or use what’s already on the grape skins and floating about the winery), ferment, bottle. Just like that.
- Blend: Many many sparkling wines are labeled NV (Non-Vintage). This means base wines from previous years can be blended with wines from this year. This helps even out the vagaries of the vintage since many sparkling wines come from places that aren’t always so sunny. Some producers blend more than others.
- Bottle the base wine
- Add sugar and yeast (a.k.a triage) to kick off the secondary fermentation: Remember sugar + yeast = alcohol and CO2. If you trap CO2 in a bottle, you’ll get…. BUBBLES!
- Commence with riddling: This is the tricky part. The bubbles are trapped in the bottle, but so are the dead yeast cells. This is not gross. This is good. The wine’s contact with these dead yeast cells gives sparkling wine made in this way an extra note of biscuity, creamy goodness. But….most people don’t want to drink dead yeast cells. Riddling (remuage in fancy French) is the way to get them out of the bottle. The individual bottles are rotated, little by little, day by day, until all the dead yeast cells are clumped in the neck of the bottle. (There are machines that can do this. Not as romantic as riddling by hand, but it works.)
- Disgorgement and Dosage: To get that clump out, the neck of the bottle is frozen, the bottle is opened, the clump is disgorged (fancy speak for “flies out”) and the remaining wine is topped off with the dosage, a mixture of wine and sugar. The dosage differs depending on the final style desired. Some sparklers are sweetened quite a bit, some just enough so that they’re not mouth-puckeringly, painfully dry. A little bit of red wine may be added as one method of creating rosé sparkler.
- Insert cork: The fancy cork is inserted and the cage that keeps it in place is clamped on. Prior to that point, the bubbles have been kept in place with a plain old crown cap – the same sort of cap you would find on a lowly beer bottle. Not so sexy, but it gets the job done.