Champagne 101

Remember gentlemen, it's not just France we are fighting for, it's Champagne! ~ Winston Churchill, WWI

In the spirit of the season, I thought I’d do a post on Champagne. I have not as of yet delved into many champagnes, and I would most definitely classify myself as a novice. I would love to host or attend a champagne tasting at some point to better gauge my taste preferences. From Wikipedia, Champagne is a sparkling wine produced by inducing the in-bottle secondary fermentation of the wine to effect carbonation. It is produced exclusively within the Champagne region of France, from which it takes its name. Through international treaty, national law, most countries limit the use of the term to only those wines that come from the Champagne appellation. In Europe, this principle is enshrined in the European Union by Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status. Other countries, such as the United States, have recognized the exclusive nature of this name, yet maintain a legal structure that allows longtime domestic producers of sparkling wine to continue to use the term "Champagne" under specific circumstances.

A brief overview of important terms:
- Champagne: the most famous sparkling wine in the world. Grape juice ferments, carbon dioxide gas is formed and bubbles are captured. The smaller the bubble, the more intense the taste and the price.
- Brut: the most popular type of champagne, dry, or not sweet.
- Sec: sweet champagne.
- Demi-sec: even sweeter than sec.
- Non-vintage or NV: non-vintage champagne must be aged one year. The majority of champagne sold is non-vintage. Non-vintage allows for the blending of juices from different years and locations.
- Vintage: must be aged a minimum of three years and must contain 80% grapes of that year and a minimum of 11 % alcohol. Vintage champagnes are not produced every year. That is up to the discretion of the vintner.
- Blanc de Blancs: champagne made exclusively from Chardonnay grapes, the most delicate of champagnes. Only 25 % of Champagne region is planted with Chardonnay, so Blanc de Blancs can be hard to come by.
- Blanc de Noir: champagne made from black Pinot Noir or Pinot Meunier grapes.
- Methode Champenoise: Process can last from 18-40 months. It is a long, protracted, labor-intensive method, with the wine staying in bottles from second fermentation through aging, rather than being in vats. Méthode Champenoise is the traditional method by which Champagne is produced. After primary fermentation and bottling, a second alcoholic fermentation occurs in the bottle. This second fermentation is induced by adding several grams of yeast and several grams of rock sugar. According to the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée a minimum of 1.5 years is required to completely develop all of the flavor. For years where the harvest is exceptional, a millesimé is declared. This means that the champagne will be very good and has to mature for at least 3 years. During this time the champagne bottle is sealed with a crown cap similar to that used on beer bottles. After ageing, the bottle is manipulated, either manually or mechanically, in a process called remuage (riddling, in English), so that the lees settle in the neck of the bottle. After chilling the bottles, the neck is frozen, and the cap removed. The pressure in the bottle forces out the ice containing the lees, and the bottle is quickly corked to maintain the carbon dioxide in solution.

The Different Methods
There are two different methods to make champagne. The most common method used for sparkling wine has been around for about a hundred years. It is known as the Charmat process, and costs a fraction of the méthode champenoise to use. True French Champagne involves the use of the traditional Méthode Champenoise, as described above. The Charmat process, on the other hand, involves putting still wine in cold, large pressure sealed tanks where it is "seeded", meaning that sugar and yeast are added, and allowed to ferment. The fermentation creates carbon dioxide...bubbles. The next process is filtering, to remove sediment. This is done under pressure so the wine remains "bubbly". The now "sparkling wine" is adjusted for sweetness, then bottled, and then shipped out. This entire process can take as little as three weeks. That is the inexpensive and most common way of doing it.

Types of Champagne
Most of the Champagne produced today is NV or "Non-vintage", meaning that is a blended product of grapes from multiple vintages. Most of the base will be from a single year vintage with producers blending anywhere from 10-15% (even as high as 40%) of wine from older vintages. If the conditions of a particular vintage are favorable, some producers will make a "Vintage" wine that must be composed of at least 85% of the grapes from vintage year. Under Champagne wine regulations, houses that make both vintage and non-vintage wines are allowed to use no more than 80% of the total vintage's harvest for the production of vintage Champagne. This allows at least 20% of the harvest from favorable vintages to be reserved for use in non-vintage Champagne. In less than ideal vintages, some producers will produce a wine from only that single vintage and still label it as non-vintage rather than as "vintage" since the wine will be of lesser quality and the producers have little desire to reserve the wine for future blending.

Prestige cuvee: A cuvée de prestige is a proprietary blended wine (usually a Champagne) that is considered to be the top of a producer's range. Famous examples include Louis Roederer's Cristal, Laurent-Perrier's Grand Siècle, Moët & Chandon's Dom Pérignon, and Pol Roger's Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill. The original prestige cuvée was Moët & Chandon's Dom Pérignon, launched in 1936 with the 1921 vintage. Until then, Champagne houses produced different cuvées of varying quality, but a top-of-the-range wine produced to the highest standards (and priced accordingly) was a new idea. In fact, Louis Roederer had been producing Cristal since 1876, but this was strictly for the private consumption of the Russian tsar. Cristal was made publicly available with the 1945 vintage. Then came Taittinger's Comtes de Champagne (first vintage 1952), and Laurent-Perrier's Grand Siècle 'La Cuvée' in 1960, a blend of three vintages (1952, 1953, and 1955). In the last three decades of the twentieth century, most Champagne houses followed these with their own prestige cuvées, often named after notable people with a link to that producer (Veuve Clicquot's La Grande Dame, the nickname of the widow of the house's founder's son; Pol Roger's Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill, named for the British prime minister; and Laurent-Perrier's Cuvée Alexandra rosé, to name just three examples), and presented in non-standard bottle shapes (following Dom Pérignon's lead with its eighteenth-century revival design).

Blanc de noirs: A French term (literally "white of blacks") for a white wine produced entirely from black grapes. It is often encountered in Champagne, where a number of houses have followed the lead of Bollinger's prestige cuvée Vieilles Vignes Françaises in introducing a cuvée made from either Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier or a blend of the two (these being the only two black grapes permitted within the Champagne AOC appellation). Although Bollinger's wine is famed for its intense richness and full-bodied nature, this has more to do with the way the grapes are planted and when they are harvested than any intrinsic property of blanc de noirs Champagne.

Blanc de blancs: A French term that means "white of whites", and is used to designate champagnes made exclusively from Chardonnay grapes. The term is occasionally used in other sparkling wine-producing regions, usually to denote Chardonnay-only wines rather than any sparkling wine made from other white grape varieties.

Rosé Champagne: Champagne is typically light in color even if it is produced with red grapes, because the juice is extracted from the grapes using a gentle process that minimizes the amount of time the juice spends in contact with the skins, which is what gives red wine its color. The rosé wines of Champagne are produced either by leaving the clear juice of black grapes to macerate on its skins for a brief time or, more commonly, by adding a small amount of still Pinot noir red wine to the sparkling wine cuvee. Rosé Champagne is one of the few wines that allows the production of Rosé by the addition a small amount of red wine during blending. This ensures a predictable and reproducible color, allowing a constant Rosé color from year-to-year.

Sweetness
The amount of sugar (dosage) added after the second fermentation and aging varies and will dictate the sweetness level of the Champagne. Below is the order from driest to sweetest.

* Brut Natural or Brut Zéro (less than 3 grams of sugar per liter)
* Extra Brut (less than 6 grams of sugar per liter)
* Brut (less than 15 grams of sugar per liter)
* Extra Sec or Extra Dry (12 to 20 grams of sugar per liter)
* Sec (17 to 35 grams of sugar per liter)
* Demi-Sec (33 to 50 grams of sugar per liter)
* Doux (more than 50 grams of sugar per liter)

The most common is brut, although throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th century Champagne was generally much sweeter than it is today.

Champagne Etiquette
Glass: Champagne is usually served in a champagne flute, whose characteristics include a long stem with a tall, narrow bowl, thin sides and an etched bottom. Other types of wine glasses are not recommended as they disperse the nose and over-oxygenate the wine. The long-stemmed flutes hold approximately 5 oz. when filled to the rim. Therefore, the normal serving is approximately 3 oz. and a .750 ml bottle which holds 25 oz. will provide you approximately 8 servings per bottle. If you are planning a party, this may be a good guideline for your party requirements.

Temperature: Champagne is always served cold, its ideal drinking temperature at 7 to 9 °C (43 to 48 °F). Often the bottle is chilled in a bucket of ice and water before opening. Champagne buckets are made specifically for this purpose, and often have a larger volume than standard wine-cooling buckets (to accommodate the larger bottle, and more water and ice).

Opening Champagne bottles: At the 1967 24 Hours of Le Mans, winner Dan Gurney started the tradition of spraying the crowd and each other. However, this opening will waste much of the Champagne. To reduce the risk of spilling Champagne and/or turning the cork into a dangerous projectile, a Champagne bottle can be opened by holding the cork and rotating the bottle (rather than the cork). By using a 45 degree angle, the surface of the champagne has the maximum surface area, thus minimizing the excessive bubbling. The cork should not pop. The cork can ease out with a sigh or a whisper rather than a pop. When properly executed it should come off with a quiet sigh. The flavor will be largely the same, irrespective of the method used, but the volume left in the bottle will differ. The whispering noise made while opening the bottle is sometimes named "le soupir amoureux" (loving whisper).

It is a common perception that people become intoxicated more quickly on champagne. It has been shown that alcohol is more rapidly absorbed when mixed with carbonated water, and this may explain this anecdotal assertion.

Champagne has reached its maturity and is ready for immediate consumption as soon as it leaves the champagne house. However, champagne may be stored in cellar-like conditions for several years. The important conditions are a constant, cool temperature, no vibrations and no light. The bottles must be stored horizontally to keep the cork moist and thus retain its elasticity. This will keep the gas in and the air out.