Raising a Glass to 2020
Many of us will be looking forward to raising a glass of bubbly to toast the New Year - but what about the fastidious craftsmanship that goes into the creation of the delicious contents of your flute?
Legend tells us that the king of sparkling wines, Champagne, was invented in 1668 by Dom Pérignon, a Benedictine monk turned cellar master, at the Abbey of St Peter in the Marne region in north-eastern France.
However, writings from before this time have been found that describe English coopers adding sugar to wines to make them sparkle. London is also known to have had thick glass bottles and cork stoppers at this time, necessary for keeping the bubbles in sparkling wine, while these were only recorded in France a couple of decades later.
Whatever their origin, sparkling wines certainly came into fashion for the first time in London and Paris in the mid-1660s – they’ve remained in fashion ever since! These days, there are three ways of producing a bottle of bubbles as we know it: secondary fermentation in bottle or tank, or carbonation.
Secondary fermentation in the bottle is the classic, or traditional, method and will be typically found written on the label (except on Champagne, where it’s taken as a given). This method is accepted around the world as the best way to produce sparkling wines, and, aside from Champagne, includes French Crémant, Spanish Cava and South African Cap Classique. It involves a first fermentation to produce the base, still wine; blending to a defined quality and style; then bottling and a second fermentation (which creates the bubbles and distinctive biscuity taste) in the bottle.
The base grape of Champagne, as well as many classic method New World sparkling wines, is typically Pinot Noir, blended with Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay. Other French classic method wines will use Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Franc and certain other permitted grape varieties. Cava is made with Macabeo, Xarel-lo, Parellada and Chardonnay.
After a defined resting period (for example, nine months for Cava), riddling and disgorgement processes remove the sediment resulting from the fermentation. This is a costly and time-consuming stage, with each bottle handled individually.
The second method of making sparkling wine replaces this step by emptying the bottles into a tank instead, filtering under pressure in bulk and rebottling.
While the quality of the sparkle can be affected by this time-saving hack, it still employs natural fermentation processes to create the bubbles and can lead to good sparkling wines at cheaper prices. The majority of Australian sparkling wines are made using this method, as well as popular German and Italian bubblies Sekt, Asti and Prosecco.
The third method of making sparkling wine – carbonation – is to produce CO2 not by alcohol fermentation but by simply pumping it into any wine, inserting bubbles but not otherwise altering the product. The special subtlety of flavour created by yeast autolysis during the painstaking classic method, for example, does not exist in these wines.
One thing is for sure: bubbly has become synonymous with celebration. As you raise a glass on December 31 to toast the year ahead, those delicious classic or tank method flavours will be the perfect accompaniment, whether you're at a glittering soirée or home by the fire.
Lorna Lee is a communications specialist, with many years of experience in the travel and tourism industry. Based near Nice in France, Lorna is fluent in French, Spanish, Portuguese and Irish. She also has a Wine & Spirit Education Trust qualification and runs her own guesthouse in France.