Sparkling Wine
From LoveToKnow Wine
American Sparkling wines…or can you say Champagne?
Perhaps the question I heard most frequently working in a sparkling winery was this. Truth is, in America we can call any sparkling wine Champagne if we wanted to — a fact that the French go to great lengths to hide from us. The reason we, by law, can actually call our bubbly champagne goes back to the end of World War I, where the first Treaty of Versailles was signed. A stipulation to that treaty was that only wines from geographical areas of France can be called that wine (i.e. Chablis, Burgundy, Champagne). So, for instance, if you lived in Italy and made a sparkling wine you could not call it Champagne…so they call theirs Proseco. So how are we able to call it Champagne, you ask? Well, back at the end of WWI this country was still in prohibition, so there was no need for us to sign that part of the treaty since we could not sell any alcohol (little did they know). And Bang…here we are today. Some sparkling wineries do call their bubbly wine Champagne (Korbel calls theirs California Champagne) while others stick to the term sparkling wine.
The Process of Making Sparkling Wine
So, let’s talk about the process of making sparkling wine. Historically, they are made with 3 different grapes: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Pinot Meunier. You can actually make sparkling anything, really, but those are the traditional grapes to use. So, you have your grapes growing out in the vineyards, but you actually will pick these about 3-4 weeks before picking for a normal still wine. The acids are high and the sugars are low, which is what you want. After the grapes are picked, they are made into a still wine, just like making any other wine, by fermenting the grapes. This wine is a very acidic, low in alcohol, non-oaked wine at this point, and the grape varietals are fermented separately. This process takes about 1 month, but can vary depending on the winery.
Blending
Next step is the blending. The winemaker and his/her staff will sit down and taste all the different lots of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier to figure out what to blend together to make the final product. If you are doing a blend of all 3 grapes, it’s a lot of tasting to go through. The idea is to keep the house style (winery style year after year) consistent in the end. If you only make a still wine out of Pinot Noir, it’s called a Blanc de Noirs (white from black) and if you’re making a sparkling out of just Chardonnay it’s called a Blanc de Blanc (white from white). Pinot Meunier is blending grape, and usually accounts for about 5-7% of the final blend. After the final blend is done, it’s time to put that mixture (called a cuveé) into the bottle.
Bottling
The cuveé is inserted into each bottle with a mixture of yeast and sugar and then a cap seals it off. This creates another fermentation (called secondary fermentation) in the bottle, which is what gives you the bubbles. Remember that fermentation is the process of yeast eating sugar and the byproducts are alcohol and Carbon Dioxide (CO2). With the cap on the top the bottle the CO2 has nowhere to go so it makes itself integrated with the wine—thus giving you bubbles. The longer the bottle sits like this with the yeast (French term called “en tirage”), the smaller and more integrated the bubbles. This process is called Methode Champenoise, the same method of making Champagne in France. There are cheaper methods of making sparkling wines, but any winery worth its salt will use this method for making the highest quality sparkling wines.
Final Steps
After the bottle has sat for 2-4 years, it’s time to drink them. The problem is, the yeast that has eaten the sugar and now is lying dormant in the bottle, acting like a silty sediment. To get the yeast out, the bottle is riddled, or turned and angled up slowly, so that the bottle starts from a horizontal position to an upright position where the bottle is upside down. This process is done by machines for the most part, and what this does is move that sediment to the neck of the bottle. The bottle is then placed in another machine where the top inch of the bottle neck is frozen quickly, and then the bottle cap is removed and the natural pressure from the bottle pushes the frozen yeast plug out, thus removing the sediment without losing much wine. Wine with a sugar syrup is added (called dosage) back into the bottle to give it just a little bit of residual sugar to make it drinkable (drinking a bone dry sparkling wine is tough—super acidic) and then a cork and wire hood is put on and the wine sits for 6 months or so to integrate the dosage and let the wine rest through its traumatic experience it just went through. At this point it’s ready to drink.
Open With Care
To open a bottle of sparkling wine, never aim it anyone (no matter how tempting)! There are about 3 atmospheres worth of pressure inside so the cork can pop very quickly and travel very fast. The correct way of opening a bottle is to hold it at a 45 degree angle, hold a cloth over the cork and grip, then slightly turn the bottle (not the cork) very gently until you hear a hiss. Popping the cork and spraying the wine actually deflates the bubbles and loses wine out of the bottle—a big no-no! You may now serve, and enjoy! Cheers!
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