My wife and I recently took a trip to the Willamette Valley in Oregon for some hiking and wine tasting. Neither one of us had ever been to Oregon, so we were able to cross the state off our bucket list. More importantly, we had a great time! Of course, I also learned a few things about wine that I didn't know. I've never been a huge fan of sparkling wine, but after tasting some really good sparkling wines in Oregon, perhaps I will reconsider.
I will admit that until a few years ago, I never knew that there was a difference between champagne and sparkling wine. I thought that there was "Champagne" with a capital C (made in France), as well as "champagne" with a lower-case C (which was made everywhere else). Contrary to popular belief, there's a difference between champagne (regardless of whether it is spelled with a capital or lower-case letter) and sparkling wine. "Champagne" refers to a sparkling wine that is specifically made in the Champagne wine region in northeastern France. All other varieties should just be called sparkling wine and not champagne, even though most of us do so.
Sparkling wine is usually white (wine produced by the fermentation of the grape pulp minus the skins) or rosé (an intermediate between red and white wine), but there are also examples of red (wine produced by the fermentation of the grape pulp with the skins) sparkling wines, including the Italian sparkling red wines, Brachetto and Lambrusco. Sparkling wine can range from dry (which is actually a technical term for wine that contains very little sugar, so it's not sweet) - also known as brut (French for "hard") to sweet (which of course is a wine containing a lot of sugar) - also known as doux (French for "soft").
The sparkling (fizzy) nature of sparkling wine is due to higher content of carbon dioxide which is produced during secondary fermentation, either in a bottle (which is the traditional method) or in a large stainless steel tank (which is the more commonly used method today). Apparently, the effervescence or "fizziness" of certain wines was noted as far back as Ancient Greece, but the cause was often misunderstood. Ancient winemakers thought that the presence of bubbles was due to phases of the moon or to the influence of good versus evil spirits.
The French Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Pérignon actually did not invent the French sparkling white wine that we now call "champagne". As a matter of fact, his superiors at the Abbey of Hautvillers once tasked him with trying to remove the fizziness out of the sparkling wine, because the bottles had an uncanny tendency to bursting in the cellar. Even though he didn't invent champagne, Dom Pérignon did a lot to perfect how champagne was made, which is why even today Dom Pérignon champagne is considered one of the finest brands of champagne out there.
I also recently learned another bit of trivia about champagne. Apparently, a group of divers found a crate of 70 bottles of champagne from a 19th century shipwreck in the Baltic Sea in 2010. The champagne was 172 years old and thought to be worth at least $4 million. The bottles were still corked, and the champagne was perfectly preserved due to the cold temperatures in the Baltic Sea. Imagine drinking a bottle of "shipwreck champagne" from the 19th century!
So, what is the take-home message from all of this talk about sparkling wine? Great question! Both the history of champagne and Dom Pérignon, as well as the story about "shipwreck champagne" prove to me once again that some of the finest things in life were once thought to be flaws. Sometimes, when we see a flaw, we should change our perspective. The effervescence that makes champagne so appealing to many of us was originally thought to be a flaw. When viewed in a different way, it became the defining characteristic of a whole family of fine wines. I am also reminded that some of our most important advances came about as a result of mistakes and accidents. It is true that we can learn a lot by taking risks and making mistakes. There is no better way of learning and growing. And every once in a while, we may find ourselves with 200 year-old champagne worth millions!
No comments:
Post a Comment