Champagne

Champagne is a light sparkling wine made only in the old province of Champagne,in the
north eastern part of France . Champagne strictly has to be produced using Pinot Noir , Pinot
Meunier and Chardonnay grapes grown in the Champagne region only . Champagne is a
carbonated wine, that has bubbles, which usually takes on the name associated with the region
or country specific to where the wine originated.The French are territorial about the name , allowing only
sparkling wine that is actually made in the Champagne region of France to be called
Champagne.Still wines from the Champagne region were known before medieval times. The Romans were the first to
plant vineyards in this area of north-east France,during the 5th century. Champagne achieves the bubbles by undergoing
the fermentation process TWICE , once in the barrels and secondly in the bottles . The
carbonation in sparkling
wine is created using one of two methods: Méthode Champenoise  (Champagne method)
or Metodo Italiano, which is also known as the Charmat-Martinotti method.

There are many legends of how sparkling wine was first produced , but the myth we like best is
the story of Monk Dom Perignon. As the story goes, in e 1600s the monk was making white wine
in the Champagne region of France. He decided to bottle the wine he had fermented earlier than
usual because, when he checked the fermentation tanks, it seemed to him that the yeast had
finished converting all the sugar to alcohol. In fact, the temperature in the Champagne region
had become so cold that the yeast in the tanks had simply gone to sleep, even though they
weren’t done eating all the sugar. When the spring came and the wine in the bottles began to
warm, the yeast woke up and hurriedly began eating all of the leftover sugar.  As they ate the
sugar, the carbon dioxide they were creating had no place to escape, as it would in a large
fermentation tanks, so instead the CO2 was absorbed by the wine, thereby carbonating it. When
Dom Perignon went to check on his wine he encountered corks popping all around him; he
tasted the wine and loved the results, thus the birth of Champagne. Since the discovery of the
Champagne method, which is often called the traditional method, Champagne has exploded
across the world, quickly becoming the most well-known and highly regarded sparkler.
The real difference between the Charmat-Martinotti method and the Champagne method is the ultimate taste of the
wine. Wines in the Charmat-Martinotti method tend to be younger and fruitier while wines made using the Champagne
method are often drier and less fruity.
 Méthode Champenoise / Méthode Traditionelle: This is the slowest and most costly way to do things, and all
Champagne is made this way. This approach has two names, as outside of Champagne, winemakers legally
need to use a different name to refer to the same production process. French sparkling wines labeled Crémant,
Spanish Cava, and Italian Franciacorta all are produced using this method. 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 Saccharomyces cerevisiae and rock sugar to the bottle - although each brand has its own secret
recipe . According to the appellation d'origine contrôlée a minimum of 1.5 years is required to completely develop all
the flavour. 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 aging, the bottle is manipulated, either
manually or mechanically, in a process called remuage (or "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. This process is called disgorgement.
The pressure in the bottle forces out the ice containing the lees, some wine from previous vintages as well as
additional sugar (le dosage) is added to maintain the level within the bottle and, importantly, adjust the sweetness of
the finished wine and then the bottle is quickly corked to maintain the carbon dioxide in solution.
 Transfer Method: This approach is very similar to the Méthode Traditionelle, but the final production stages
are carried out in a tank, as opposed to in bottles.
 Charmat Process / Metodo Italiano or Martinotti: Using this method for producing sparkling wine, invented
in Italy, secondary fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks. Prosecco and Asti, the popular Italian
sparkling wines, lend themselves to this approach.
* Gas injection — injecting carbon dioxide  as if you were making soda – is a fourth way to make sparkling wine,
although it’s only used to make extremely cheap sparkling wines.
Sweetness:
Just after disgorgement a "liqueur de dosage" - a blend of - most times- cane sugar and wine (sugar amounts up to 750
g/litre)- is added to adjust the levels of sugar in the Champagne when bottled for sale, and hence the sweetness of the
finished wine. Today sweetness is generally not looked for per se, dosage is used to fine tune the perception of acidity in
the wine. Wines labeled Brut Zero, more common among smaller producers, have no added sugar and will usually be very
dry, with less than 3 grams of residual sugar per litre in the finished wine.
The high sugar level was characteristic of people's tastes at the time, and Jeandet explained that it was common for people
in the 19th century, such as Russians, to add sugar to their wine at dinner. It also contained higher concentrations of
minerals such as iron, copper, and table salt than modern-day Champagne does.
Sparkling wine has four levels of sweetness. The level of sweetness of the wine will be printed
directly on the bottle.
Brut:  (less than 12 grams)
This is the most popular type of sparkling wine. The wine is dry, but there is just a hint of sweetness. In this sparkler,
the winemaker stopped the fermentation process just before the yeast ate all of the sugar, leaving a tiny amount behind
in the wine. Champagne is the most common sparkler to be labeled Brut.

Extra Dry:  (between 12 and 17 grams)

This type of sparkler is dry, but not as dry as Brut or Extra-Brut, meaning it retains a slight sweetness. It’s not sugary
sweet, although they are noticeably sweeter than Brut wines. Prosecco is most often Extra Dry.

Demi-sec:  (between 32 and 50 grams)

This is a sweet sparkling wine. One would usually drink Demi-sec with dessert, as there is a
prevalent amount of noticeable sugar.
Sparkling wines are produced worldwide, but many legal structures reserve the word Champagne exclusively for sparkling
wines from the Champagne region, made in accordance with Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne regulations
and adhering to the standards defined for it as an appellation d'origine contrôlée; the protection was reaffirmed in the Treaty
of Versailles after World War I .
Sparkling wines are produced worldwide, and many producers use special terms to define them: Spain uses Cava, Italy
designates it spumante, and South Africa uses cap classique. An Italian sparkling wine made from the Muscat grape uses
the DOCG Asti and from the Glera grape the DOCG Prosecco. In Germany, Sekt is a common sparkling wine. Other
French wine regions cannot use the name Champagne: e.g., Burgundy and Alsace produce Crémant. The village
of Champagne, Switzerland, has traditionally made a still wine labelled as "Champagne", the earliest records of viticulture
dated to 1657.

Grape varieties and styles used in the making of champagne :

Champagne is a single appellation d'origine contrôlée. As a general rule, grapes used must be the white Chardonnay, or
the dark-skinned "red wine grapes" Pinot noir or Pinot Meunier, which, due to the gentle pressing of the grapes and
absence of skin contact during fermentation, usually also yield a white base wine.

Four other grape varieties are permitted, mostly for historical reasons, as they are rare in current usage. Arbane,
Chardonnay, Petit Meslier, Pinot blanc, Pinot gris, Pinot Meunier, and Pinot noir. The dark-skinned Pinot noir and Pinot
meunier give the wine its length and backbone. They are predominantly grown in two areas – the Montagne de Reims and
the Vallée de la Marne. Chardonnay gives the wine its acidity and biscuit flavour. Most Chardonnay is grown in a north–
south-running strip to the south of Épernay, called the Côte des Blancs, including the villages of Avize, Oger and Le Mesnil-
sur-Oger.

Types of Champagne :
Most of the Champagne produced today is "Non-vintage", meaning that it is a blended[39] 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.[27] If the conditions of a particular vintage are favourable, some producers will make a
vintage wine that must be composed of 100% of the grapes from that vintage year. [40] 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 each vintage to be reserved for use
in non-vintage Champagne. This ensures a consistent style that consumers can expect from non-vintage Champagne that
does not alter too radically depending on the quality of the vintage.

Prestige cuvée :

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, Duval-Leroy's Cuvée Femme, Armand de Brignac Gold Brut, and Pol Roger's Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill.

Blanc de noirs :

A French term (literally "white from blacks" or "white of blacks") for a white wine produced entirely from black grapes. The
flesh of grapes described as black or red is white; grape juice obtained after minimal possible contact with the skins
produces essentially white wine, with a slightly yellower colour than wine from white grapes. The colour, due to the small
amount of red skin pigments present, is often described as white-yellow, white-grey, or silvery. Blanc de noirs 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 .

Blanc de blancs :

A French term that means "white from whites", and is used to designate Champagnes made exclusively from Chardonnay
grapes or in rare occasions from Pinot blanc . 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.
Dont's For Chilling Champagne
 Do not over chill the champagne: although it should never be warm, it worse for it to be icy
or nearly -frozen.
 Do not under fill the ice bucket: you'll wind up chilling only half the bottle; add cold water
to ice cubes to make sure the bottle is well submerged; this also makes it easier to put
the bottle back into the bucket.
 Do not try to chill two bottles in a bucket; it is better to leave the second bottle in the
refrigerator in an insulated container.
 Do not chill the glasses ahead of time, either by filling them with ice cubes or crushed ice;
you're not making a martini! It will have a negative effect on the release of the bubbles
and the bouquet of the champagne.
 

Dont's In Handling The Bottle

 Don't hide the label and wrap the bottle in a towel like it's a newborn baby. This
contemptible practice actually began in Parisian nightclubs as a way to conceal the label
of a cheap champagne so as not to reveal to the customer that he or she was being
charged for a more expensive bottle of the bubbly. But you will still want to have a
napkin or towel on hand to wipe off excess water from the bottle when you remove it
from the ice bucket.
 Never return an empty champagne bottle to the ice bucket upside-down! It shows
an utter lack of respect for the prestigious beverage you have just consumed, and worse
yet, a tactless disregard for the companions you have just shared it with.
 Don't swirl the champagne in the glass like a pretentious wine connoisseur! The
French call this "champagne battering", because swirling the bubbly in the glass will
only succeed in compromising in thirty seconds the bubbles that took at least three
years to produce.
 Don't be a "locker room" champagne batterer! When serving this elegant sparkling
beverage, don't be a Super Bowl or World Series champion who shakes the bottle
senselessly in order to squander its contents by spraying it on your co- champions
instead of drinking it.

Champagne bottles:
Champagne is mostly fermented in two sizes of bottles, standard bottles (750 millilitres) and magnums (1.5 litres). In
general, magnums are thought to be higher quality, as there is less oxygen in the bottle, and the volume-to-surface area
ratio favours the creation of appropriately sized bubbles. However, there is no hard evidence for this view. Other bottle
sizes, mostly named for Biblical figures, are generally filled with Champagne that has been fermented in standard bottles or
magnums. Gosset still bottles its Grande Réserve in jeroboam from the beginning of its second fermentation.
Sizes larger than Jeroboam (3 L) are rare. Primat bottles (27 L)—and, as of 2002, Melchizedek bottles (30 L)—are
exclusively offered by the House Drappier. (The same names are used for bottles containing regular wine and port;
however, Jeroboam, Rehoboam, and Methuselah refer to different bottle volumes.) [45]
Unique sizes have been made for specific markets, special occasions and people. The most notable example is perhaps
the 20 fluid oz. / 56.8 cl (imperial pint) bottle made between 1874 and 1973 for the English market by Pol Roger, often
associated with Sir Winston Churchill.
In 2009, a bottle of 1825 Perrier-Jouët Champagne was opened at a ceremony attended by 12 of the world's top wine
tasters. This bottle was officially recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest bottle of Champagne in the world.
The contents were found to be drinkable, with notes of truffles and caramel in the taste. There are now only two other
bottles from the 1825 vintage extant.
In July 2010, 168 bottles were found on board a shipwreck near the Åland Islands in the Baltic Sea by Finnish diver
Christian Ekström. Initial analyses indicated there were at least two types of bottle from two different houses: Veuve
Clicquot in Reims and the long-defunct Champagne house Juglar (absorbed into Jacquesson in 1829.)[48] The shipwreck is
dated between 1800 and 1830, and the bottles discovered may well predate the 1825 Perrier-Jouët referenced
above. When experts were replacing the old corks with new ones, they discovered there were also bottles from a third
house, Heidsieck. The wreck, then, contained 95 bottles of Juglar, 46 bottles of Veuve Clicquot, and four bottles of
Heidsieck, in addition to 23 bottles whose manufacture is still to be identified.

Champagne corks:
Champagne corks are mostly built from three sections and are referred to as agglomerated corks. The mushroom shape
that occurs in the transition is a result of the bottom section's being composed of two stacked discs of pristine cork
cemented to the upper portion, which is a conglomerate of ground cork and glue. The bottom section is in contact with the
wine. Before insertion, a sparkling wine cork is almost 50% larger than the opening of the bottle. Originally, the cork starts
as a cylinder and is compressed before insertion into the bottle. The aging of the Champagne post-disgorgement can to
some degree be told by the cork, as, the longer it has been in the bottle, the less it returns to its original cylinder shape.

Champagne etiquette:
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. The intended purpose of the shape of the flute is to reduce surface area, therefore preserving
carbonation, as well as maximizing nucleation (the visible bubbles and lines of bubbles). Champagne is always served cold;
its ideal drinking temperature is 7 to 9 °C (45 to 48 °F). Often the bottle is chilled in a bucket of ice and water, half an hour
before opening, which also ensures the Champagne is less gassy and can be opened without spillage. 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 :

To reduce the risk of spilling or spraying any Champagne, open the Champagne bottle by holding the cork and rotating the
bottle at an angle in order to ease out the stopper. This method, as opposed to pulling the cork out, prevents the cork from
flying out of the bottle at speed. (The expanding gases are supersonic.) Also, holding the bottle at an angle allows air in and
helps prevent the champagne from geysering out of the bottle.
A sabre can be used to open a Champagne bottle with great ceremony. This technique is called sabrage (the term is also
used for simply breaking the head of the bottle).

Sabering The Bottle

It's a French tradition that if you have a stubborn cork, you should not give up: if you can't
dislodge a recalcitrant cork from a bottle of good champagne, you can do what the "Hussards"
(French mounted soldiers of the Napoleonic era) did: they used the reverse edge of their saber
to break the neck of the bottle. Hence, the French expression "sabrer la bouteille"- literally
"saber the bottle" came about, illustrating the French belief that it is better to destroy a bottle
than to do without champagne! Obviously we no longer go to these lengths to open a bottle but
if you have a stubborn cork, rather than use your saber, use "The Champagne Opener" .
Removing The Wire From A Cork
According to experts, if you can remove the wire in five and a half twists, you are about to open
a top quality bottle- "the real thing." Actually it's not necessary to remove the wire in order to pop
the cork. Simply loosen the wire and grip the head of the cork with "The Champagne Opener"
then gently twist back and forth.

Pouring Champagne[edit]
Pouring sparkling wine while tilting the glass at an angle and gently sliding in the liquid along the side will preserve the most
bubbles, as opposed to pouring directly down to create a head of "mousse", according to a study, On the Losses of
Dissolved CO2 during Champagne serving, by scientists from the University of Reims.[59] Colder bottle temperatures also
result in reduced loss of gas.[59] Additionally, the industry is developing Champagne glasses designed specifically to reduce
the amount of gas lost.

How To Drink Champagne

Follow the advice of Colette, the French writer (the author of Gigi) and don't drink your
champagne too rapidly.  According to Janis Lightner of the Miramonte Winery in Temecula,
California, if you drink it too fast, you will swallow all the bubbles and they will go into your
bloodstream too quickly - which for many of us results in a headache. This can be avoided by
taking small sips and letting the bubbles dissipate in your mouth before you swallow. Try it! You
will prolong the enjoyment of your champagne, and you'll feel much better tomorrow!
What To Serve With Champagne
Champagne and sparkling wines have a great deal of versatility. They can be served throughout
the day and throughout a meal as well. The driest ones are excellent with elegant appetizers
such as oysters and caviar. The semi-dry sparkling wines are suitable for brunch, lunch, salads,
and some dinner entrees. The sweeter sparkling wines are always recommended with desserts.
When To Drink Champagne
Thanks to its association with royalty and ceremonies, champagne is the traditional wine for
celebration of any kind, but especially the launching of ships, hot air balloons, and the New
Year. Whether you're celebrating a major event, minor event, or being alive in general- or like
Napoleon, consoling yourself after a defeat- you have joined the world's bon vivants in choosing
this beverage. Savor the effervescence which began so many centuries ago in an abbey wine
cellar. You have exercised excellent judgment in using "The Champagne Opener" to help you
effortlessly partake of the bubbly. You will still hear the exciting "pop" of the cork without
annoyance, embarrassment, or injury. You will not have to "sabrer la bouteille." A vote santé!
Don't forget to make a toast- to anything or anyone- before you take your first sip!
"I drink it when I'm happy and when I'm sad. Sometimes, I drink it when I'm alone. When I have
company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I'm not hungry and drink it if I am; Otherwise I
never touch it - unless I'm thirsty." - Madame Bollinger, one of the "grande dames" of French
champagne (1884-1977)
Champagne Trivia
 There are approximately 58 million bubbles in one bottle of champagne.
 The pressure in a bottle of champagne is 90 pounds per square inch, about three times
that in your automobile tire.
A flying cork can travel up to 50 MPH with enough force to cause permanent eye damage.
 In 2000 California produced approximately 59 million bottles of champagne.
 In 2000 France produced approximately 327 million bottles of champagne.
 In 2000 California consumed approximately 32 million bottles of champagne.
 In 2000 Washington D.C. had the highest per capita adult consumption of champagne in
the U.S.- about 2.4 bottles per adult.
 In 2000 Hawaii and Illinois consumed about 1.7 bottles per adult.
 In 2000 California consumed about 1.4 bottles per adult.