Champagne - Fizz or the Real Thing?

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Champagne - Fizz or the Real Thing?

The traditional method of producing sparkling wine, as developed in the Champagne region of France, has been widely adopted around the world to produce a large variety of styles and colours of wine. The inherent practices involved in this method are both its strengths and its weaknesses, as can be seen below.

All wine production begins with grapes, and Champagne and all of its sparkling cousins are no exception. In Champagne, the grapes used are Chardonnay (for elegance and finesse), Pinot Noir (for structure and depth of flavour) and Pinot Meunier (for its bright fruitiness). Although other grape varieties are permitted under Appellation Contrôlée regulations, they are very rarely used. It is unusual for white wines to be made from red grapes, thus whole bunches are gently basket pressed to obtain the highest quality, untinted juice. Each variety’s juice is then fermented separately, usually in stainless steel, but occasionally either partly or entirely in old oak barrels. Depending upon the style of wine required, malo-lactic fermentation may or may not be encouraged.

Champagne is at the northernmost limit for wine grape growing and its climate is cool, thus its typical wines are light and crisp, high in acidity and low in alcohol. This makes them ideal bases for sparkling wines; the high acidity in particular ensures that the finished product is properly balanced. The fact that the climate is so marginal encourages the production of non vintage blends to even out the differences between wines made in different years. It is from this point onwards that the traditional method becomes so distinct.

The art of blending, or assemblage, is to produce a wine of consistent quality, year after year, in a defined house style. These standard non-vintage blends are created from libraries of base wines from the current and previous vintages, different varieties, villages and pressings. In one vintage alone, the number of wines available to the blender can run into three figures and the blending is done solely by taste. A process little short of alchemy.

In exceptional years, a vintage cuvee may be produced. Again, this is likely to be a blend of different varieties from different vineyards, but all the base wines will be from the vintage stated on the bottle (theoretically). Some rosé Champagne is also produced, and it is the only rosé Quality Wine in the E.U. that is produced by blending a proportion of red wine into the white.

After assemblage, the wine is bottled and a small amount of liqueur de triage is added. This is a mixture of wine, sugar and yeast which will kick start a second fermentation. The bottles are sealed with a temporary crown cork holding a plastic, cup-shaped insert and laid down horizontally to mature. As the yeasts get to work, three things happen: alcohol and carbon dioxide are produced and, as they die, the dead yeast cells, or lees, form a deposit along the inside of the bottle. Unable to escape, the carbon dioxide dissolves into the wine, producing the beloved bubbles. During this maturation process, the dead yeast cells eventually break down and their enzymes interact with the wine in a process known as autolysis. This adds a distinctive and highly sought after flavour to the wine, and the amount of time spent resting on its lees contributes much to the wine’s final quality.

When maturation on the lees is complete, the deposit of dead yeast cells must be removed. The process of remuage, or riddling, is the gradual tilting and rotating of the bottles from a horizontal position up to a vertical position, allowing the sediment to settle in the plastic insert of the temporary seal. Traditionally, this was done by hand, but is now mostly a mechanized process, employing large gyropalettes to do the same job faster and more efficiently. The removal of the actual sediment, dégorgement, involves freezing the neck of the upturned bottle, removing the temporary stopper and ejecting the plug of ice and dead yeast cells under pressure.

Inevitably, a small amount of wine is lost during dégorgement. The bottle is therefore topped up to the correct level with a mixture of wine and cane sugar solution known as the liqueur d’expedition. The amount of sugar used will depend upon the ultimate level of sweetness required for the wine. This process of dosage is an important feature of each Champagne house’s own style and also helps balance the wine’s naturally high acidity. The bottles are then resealed with a large cork, compressed considerably to fit, and a wire cage is added for complete security.

As with any production technique, the traditional method has both strengths and weaknesses associated with it. Indeed, depending upon the nature of the wine to be produced, what may elsewhere be perceived as an advantage of employing the traditional method may now be seen as a drawback. There are several benefits that arise from using the traditional method, on the assumption that good quality base wines are used at the outset.

The assemblage, or blending process, enables the winemaker to eradicate any variations due to the vintage, variety or specific vineyard from the final blend, providing the house blend with the consistency of flavour and quality expected by the consumer. The dosage stage offers the winemaker further flexibility as it enables him/her to produce a range of wines at different sweetness levels from the same raw ingredients, thus appealing to a wider section of the market. Another benefit of this method is the complex array of flavours imparted by the yeast autolysis. This can only be achieved by leaving the wine in contact with its lees for a significant period of time: a minimum of fifteen months for a non-vintage Champagne. A long, slow second fermentation also imbues the wine with a fine quality mousse of very small bubbles that die away very slowly.

The indisputable strength of the traditional method is the quality of wine it can produce. Whilst the adoption of this method is no guarantee of quality in itself, it is responsible for the world’s finest, most complex and longest lived sparkling wines. There is also the prestige, and an element of perceived added value for the customer, associated with the purchase of a bottle of sparkling wine produced in this manner which is not provided by other methods.

Despite all of this, the traditional method does have its weaknesses. Assemblage is, at best, a very tricky task, requiring a very skilled blender to perform it correctly, consistently. The traditional method, as a whole, is complicated, time consuming and labour and/or equipment intensive; hence it is expensive to make wine this way and it results in high stockholding levels as the wine matures, increasing the amount of investment required. As autolysis and maturation are natural processes and can only be controlled up to a point, there can be both batch variation and quality control issues which are beyond the winemaker’s control, resulting in wastage and further expense. Wastage is also an issue during dégorgement as well as during maturation in bottle when it is not unheard of, particularly with the larger sizes, for occasional bottles to explode. Finally, the traditional method of producing sparkling wine is not always suitable for the desired final product. Wines such as Moscato D’Asti would not benefit from yeasty, bready, autolytic flavours or from the loss of its fresh grape aromas and flavours that extended maturation would result in.

Both in France and around the world, numerous other methods of producing sparkling wines are employed. The first of these to be examined is the Transfer, or Transvasage, method. This attempts to gain the advantage of a second fermentation in bottle without the disadvantages and expense of the complicated process of sediment removal required by the full traditional method. Up to and including the remuage stage, the two processes are identical. As with the traditional method, second fermentation and yeast autolysis occur in bottle, but not the bottle in which the wine is sold. The wine is disgorged into a vat under pressure, filtered in bulk and re-bottled into a fresh bottle – inevitably with some loss of gas. It can give a good quality sparkling wine at a cheaper price than the traditional method, although the quality of the bubble is slightly lower. Because this is a relatively technical process, it has found favour in the New World, but its use is not unheard of in Europe and even in Champagne, where it is used for filling either very small or very large bottles that are impractical to riddle.

The majority of the world’s sparkling wine is produced by the Tank, Charmat or Cuve Close Method. Here, the second fermentation occurs in a sealed tank rather than in the bottle. A dry base wine plus sugar and yeast is placed in the tank, and, following the second fermentation, the resulting sediment is removed by filtration under pressure before being bottled. The main advantage of this method is its much lower cost, but it tends to produce larger, more random bubbles that do not last as long as those from a bottle fermented wine. As ever, though, the better the quality of the base wine, the better the end result. The majority of tank method sparkling wines display none of the subtlety of flavour due to yeast autolysis as it does not usually occur. Some lees character can be added by stirring up the sediment on a regular basis, thereby bringing it into contact with more of the wine, and then maturing the wine in tank for up to two or three years. This is not often economically viable. The most famous examples of this method are Prosecco and Sekt.

The Asti Method differs from those above in that it does not involve the initial stage of producing a still wine. The sweet juice from pressed grapes is fermented to about 6% by volume and then chilled and filtered to stop the fermentation. Sugar and selected yeasts are then added and the wine is then put into sealed tanks to continue its fermentation. When the required alcoholic content is reached, the wine is chilled, membrane filtered and bottled under pressure. This leaves a sparkling wine, only about 7.5% by volume, with a high residual sugar content. For Asti, the grape used is Moscato, with its distinctly grapey aroma and taste and is best drunk very young. As a result, it is only fermented when required, the unfermented must being held under refrigeration in the meantime. This ensures fresh tasting wine, but the must can only be stored for a limited time before it develops unnatural vegetal aromas.

The final two methods discussed here are distinct as they do not involve a second fermentation. The méthode ancestrale, known historically as the méthode rurale, was the precursor of the traditional method and is merely a continuation of the first fermentation, the wine being bottled prior to its termination. Variants of this format are still used today for a few obscure wines in the south of France, with variable results.

The last, and cheapest, method of making sparkling wine does not use carbon dioxide produced as part of an alcoholic fermentation, but injects it into the finished wine from a cylinder. In fully sparkling wines, the bubbles produced are large and short lived and the wines often of poor quality, but, at pétillant and lower pressures, modern carbonation plants have the ability to induce the tiniest of bubbles. No Quality Wines are produced by this method. It is no substitute for either the traditional method or any of the other techniques discussed above. It adds no complexity to the wine, often made from the poorest quality base wine, and its only value is in providing the cheap thrill of popping a cork (often plastic!).

To conclude, the traditional method produces the finest quality, most complex and delicious sparkling wines in the world, and this is no accident. It is a process that has been perfected in Champagne, and elsewhere, for several hundred years. There is no substitute for great grapes, vinified carefully and re-fermented in a gentle and unhurried manner, allowing the yeast autolysis to add its unmistakable character to the finished wine. The traditional method is used around the world to produce a vast range of wines from Champagne to Cava to sparkling Shiraz in Australia, and wines made in this fashion are invariably better than those made any other way. This is not simply due to better grapes being used for this more expensive and time consuming method; there is no substitute for the character of a traditional method wine. However, it must be suitable for the wine being made – it cannot be used regardless. This is not just an issue of flavour; it is also an issue of economics. The selling price of the finished wine dictates the production method used, as do the wishes of the consumer. If no-one wants to pay for a traditional method sparkling wine, is there any point in producing one?

Many thanks to Harry for this week's Grape Gossip