
Pt. 1 – the traditional method
Guest Blog Post by Carlene Wilson
If you’re anything like me then if there’s a life event to celebrate – you want a glass of bubbles!
An old colleague used to have a bottle of bubbles every Friday night, just because! I definitely like to start a long, lazy weekend dinner party with a nice sparkler. Birthdays, Christmas, New Year’s Eve – I can think of a lot of excuses to pop the cork!
Back when I was a youngster – the 1980s – we did think we were pretty sophisticated when we pulled the plastic screw ‘cork’ from a bottle of pink Chardon!
These days, I’m looking for something a step or two up. And we are really spoiled for choice when it comes to styles and price points. Here’s a little guide to help you through the most common styles of traditional method bubbles to help you choose something perfect for your next celebration!
Champagne
The King (or Queen) of sparkling wines. People often refer to almost any sparkling wine as champagne but it is a term which specifically refers to wines made in the Champagne region of France, in a particular designated area; of eight designated grape varieties and with a huge number of rules about yield and other aspects of production.
Champagnes are made by pressing the grapes, fermenting the juice and bottling prior to fermentation being fully finished, usually under a crown (beer-style) cap. The bottles are then slowly moved from horizontal to vertical while being gently turned. This process is called riddling and brings the lees – the dead yeast from the fermentation process – into the neck. At the same time, as fermentation finishes in the bottle, the carbon dioxide this produced gets trapped in the bottle. The wine is then disgorged – a process which involves freezing the neck, taking off the crown cap and expelling the frozen plug of dead yeast. A little sweet grape juice – the dosage – is then introduced and the bottles are corked with the traditional cork and wire cage and foil and left to age.
This long and complicated process means that the wines have a very fine bubble – or bead as it’s often called – and develop a delicate yeasty, bready, brioche aroma and flavour. Champagne is traditionally very dry – but the amount and sweetness of the dosage can change that to anything from dry to quite sweet.
The length and complexity of the process is also why you pay a premium price for champagne.
Cremant
Almost every wine producing region in France produces a cremant. This term refers to a wine made in the traditional method – the method of champagne – but not in that region or with those grapes. Different regions use their most common or favoured grapes – so in Alsace you might get Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Riesling or Auxerrois. A Cremant de Loire might be made from Chenin Blanc and a Crémant de Bourgogne is likely to be Pinot Noir or Gamay.
These wines will have lots of the same characteristics of a good champagne – including those lovely bready aromas and the fine bead – but also some of the characteristics of the grapes they are made from. They also come with a much more budget-friendly price tag!
Cava
Cava is the great sparkling wine of Spain – and is also made in the traditional method. It’s made predominantly in Catalonia, near Barcelona but other regions occasionally make one. It’s generally made from three Spanish grapes – Macebo, Parellada and Xarel-lo. Again, good cava will have that brioche aroma and complexity but the grapes its made from generally mean it is a little fruitier than most champagnes or cremants – though still almost always dry.
Cava is a great value alternative – some of the best are from cava houses hundreds of years old but the prices come in far below a vintage champagne.
NZ/Australian traditional method
In New Zealand we are becoming familiar with some of the really good wines made in Marlborough and other parts of the country from traditional champagne grapes and with the traditional method – but without that price tag. Tasmania and parts of Victoria also produce excellent traditional method sparklings.
Increasingly smaller producers are disgorging but then not bothering with the traditional cork and cage, but instead re-capping with a crown cap. There’s no difference in quality – it’s just a slightly simpler and less expensive process which allows a small producer to still put out a quality product at an affordable price.
Given you can find traditional method wines from about $18 up – everyone can afford the occasional glass of real quality bubbles.
Time to get your sparkle on.