| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
| Contents | ||
The name Champagne denotes not only the location the wine comes from and its method of production, but also the grape varieties that can be used, how and where they may be grown and more, and also that the wine meets the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée regulations.
To denote a sparkling wine made with the Champagne method of bottle fermentation, some makers of other sparkling wines label them as méthode champenoise , or méthode traditionnelle.
Some countries have introduced special terms to define their own sparkling wines made by the Champagne method: Spain used Cava and South Africa uses Cap Classique.
Champagne is most often produced from a blend of black and white grapes. The main white grape permitted is Chardonnay, and the two black grapes are Pinot Noir and the otherwise obscure Pinot Meunier. Because most of the color in a red wine comes from the skins, the juice is pressed off quickly, leaving white juice. The Pink or rosé champagne is made either by allowing the skins of black grapes to impart a small amount of color and then removing them, or by adding still red wine to the finished product. Grapes used for champagne are generally picked earlier, when sugar levels are lower and acid levels higher.
The first fermentation begins in autumn, in the same way as any still wine, converting the natural sugar in the grapes into alcohol. This produces the "base wine". This wine is not very pleasurable by itself, being too acidic. At this point the blend is assembled, using wines from various vineyards, and, in the case of non-vintage champagne, various years.
The blended wine is put in bottles along with a small amount of sugar, called the tirage, and stored in a wine cellar, neck down, for fermentation. Fermentation produces carbon dioxide, and the bottle traps it, dissolving it in the wine. As the bottles are stored, they undergo a process known as riddling (remuage in French), in which they are rotated a small amount each day, so that the sediment collects in their necks and can be removed. Until this process was invented (reputedly by Madame Clicquot ) champagne was cloudy, a style still seen occasionally today under the label methode ancestral. A dosage, with a varying amount of additional sugar, is added, and the bottle is corked. The sweetest level is doux (meaning sweet) proceeding in order of increasing dryness to demi-sec (half-dry), sec (dry), extra sec (extra dry), and brut (almost completely dry). Thus an extra dry champagne is actually sweeter than one labeled brut. Some producers also make an extra brut or a wine with no added sugar.
The wine cannot legally be sold until it has aged in the bottle for at least one year, but the longer the better. Vintage champagnes are aged in cellars for 6 years or more.
Most champagne is non-vintage, a blend of wines from several years. Typically the majority of the wine is from the current year but a percentage is made of "reserve wine" from previous years. This serves to smooth out some of the vintage variations caused by the marginal growing climate in champagne. Most champagne houses strive for a consistent "house style" from year to year, and this is the hardest task of the winemaker. Good-quality vintage champagnes are the product of a single high-quality year, and bottles from prestigious makers can be rare and expensive.
Champagne is now fermented in two different bottle formats, standard bottle (750 mL), and Magnum (1.5 L). In general, magnums are thought to be higher quality, as there is less oxygen in the bottle, and the volume to surface area favors the creation of appropriately-sized bubbles. However, there is no hard evidence for this view. Other bottle sizes, named for Biblical figures, are generally filled with champagne that has been fermented in standard bottles or magnums.
List of bottle sizes:
Sizes larger than Jeroboam are rare. The same names are used for bottles containing wine and port; however, up to Methuselah they refer to different bottle volumes.