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What Puts the Sparkle in Sparkling Wine?
With New Year’s Eve rapidly approaching, you might wonder what puts the sparkle in sparkling wine?
Did you know that the pressure inside a bottle of Traditional Method sparkling wine has been compared to the tire pressure on a double-decker bus?? Typically about 5-6 atmospheres or 60-90 pounds per square inch. Open that bottle with care!
Dying to know more about sparkling wine? Check out Sparkling Wine 101! Read or Listen
All of us at Goosecross wish you a happy and healthy 2010!
The History of Champagne
Sparkling wine is one of life’s great pleasures and shouldn’t be reserved just for special occasions. For Lord Byron, it inspired poetry: “Champagne with foaming whirls, as white as Cleopatra’s melted pearls.”
Champagne, like most of the best things in life, was invented by mistake. But not the way we all think! I imagine we’ve all heard the stories about Dom Perignon opening the bottle, tasting the wine and proclaiming “I’m drinking stars!” And, of course, he’s been credited with inventing it. In truth, he spent much of his career trying to make Champagne wine that wasn’t fizzy!
We believe that wine has been made in the Champagne region of France since the time of Christ. It went through several upheavals, mostly war related, but the monastic movement in the 7th century cemented the region as a producer of wine, and the best wines of Champagne were regularly used in the coronation of kings. They came to rival the great wines of Burgundy to the south and, as in Burgundy, Pinot Noir was and is the dominant red grape of the region. In the 1600s, as they saw an opportunity to widen their markets, both domestic and export, they sought to increase quality. Here’s where Dom Perignon enters the picture. He was brought in specifically to improve quality and he succeeded spectacularly. But, at this point, Champagne wasn’t sparkling wine, at least not intentionally. It was meant to be a high quality still wine.
Things were so very different back then, in the late 1600s, and records are a little convoluted and sketchy. One thing we know for sure: in the 1600s, winemaking wasn’t very predictable and they didn’t have much control over the process. For instance, they would begin fermentation in September or October, and then the fermentation never quite finished because the cellar became so chilly that the yeast went dormant. Since the wines didn’t keep well, they were shipped by both barrel and bottle shortly after harvest and once they reached England, for instance, a very good customer then and now, the barreled wine was immediately bottled. In the meantime, the wine began to warm up in the spring and started fermenting again. Since fermentation produces carbon dioxide gas and the gas had no place to go, spritzy wine, in varying degrees was the result! This must have been a rather sorry example of sparkling wine and countless bottles burst in the flimsy glass of the time.
Dom Perignon focused his efforts on refining techniques to prevent this springtime fermentation, but the English really liked the spritzy wine and the demand grew so much that the good father ended up using his knowledge of how to prevent making sparkling wine, to developing techniques for making it on purpose.
There are older references: It’s said that wine that sparkled intentionally was first made in the 1500s by monks in the Languedoc region of southern France, before the first sparkling wine from Champagne. It was made in the way described above. There was no second fermentation, just a continuation of the alcoholic fermentation in the bottle, which meant a hazy, fizzy wine. At least in the warm, southerly climate it probably wasn’t too tart. Going even further back, there are biblical references to wines that bubbled. In Proverbs there’s a reference to “wine.when it moveth itself” and St. Matthew suggested that “Neither do men put new wine in old bottles; else the bottles break.” Perhaps these are the very first mentions of an incredible delight that came about quite by accident.
Yet another theory is that the English invented it! They certainly had great motivation-historically they are great consumers of sparkling wine. The story is that the still wines that came over from the chilly Champagne region were rather green and tart and so the English would add sugar or molasses to it to offset the tartness. Then, nature would take its course and the wine became a little livelier! They found these bubbles seductive and the effect quick and had a new reason to add the sugar.
NVWR® 76 – Sparkling Wine 101
December 30, 2008 by David
Filed under Napa Valley Wine Radio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
With New Year’s Eve rapidly approaching, what better time for a crash course in how sparkling wine is made? We looked into the history of Champagne in episode 31, so we know that sparkling wine, like table wine, was discovered by accident.
Now, we recommend that you get yourself a glass of bubbly and settle into a comfortable chair as Nancy Hawks Miller, our Director of Education, takes us through the nuts and bolts of capturing those bubbles in the bottle.
All of us at Goosecross wish you a very happy and healthy 2009.
Cheers!
NVWR® 31 – The History of Champagne
December 12, 2006 by David
Filed under Napa Valley Wine Radio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Explore the myths and the truth behind the birth of Champagne and its evolution with Nancy Hawks Miller, a 20-year veteran of the wine industry, and our Director of Education.
We are pleased to offer a special price of $20.00 per bottle and free shipping on a case for our Goosecross Sparkling Rose and a 10% discount on all other wines just for our listeners. Just call us toll-free at (800) 276-9210 and mention code: PC31 (that’s Papa, Charlie 31). Happy holidays!
2004 Napa Valley Sparkling Rose
October 12, 2005 by David
Filed under Rose, Winemaker Notes
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
We are pleased to present our first Sparkling Rosé table wine!
Our first celebratory Sparkling Rosé is made from 79% Chardonnay from the Carneros region and 21% Zinfandel from State Lane, here in Yountville. The Chardonnay was very briefly barrel aged for a touch of richness, then carefully blended to reach the right balance of luscious fruit and elegant structure. Geoff describes it as “sparkling table wine”, recognizing its vinous, more full-bodied character than you’ll find in some sparkling wines.
Misty red in color, our Rosé is youthful and bright on the palate, nicely developed, with jazzy texture and plush bead of bubbles. A fresh strawberry bouquet, along with cherry, banana, guava, and honeysuckle delight the nose while subtle accents of lively strawberry, ruby grapefruit, cranberry, nutmeg and spice linger on the finish. Dry and fragrant with vibrant acidity.
Listen to our audio winemaker note: mp3
Read more about this wine here.
