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Champagne
Non-vintage or vintage?
- Non-vintage Champagne is made with consistency in mind so that they taste the same year after year, unlike vintage dated wines.
- Vintage Champagne is aged for a minimum of 3 years in bottle on lees prior to release. This aging process helps integrate the complex flavours and gives the wine a biscuity character.
It’s impossible to describe why Champagne became synonymous with sparkling wine without first explaining how its climate impacts the fermentation process. Champagne is one of the coldest wine producing regions in the world. It experiences all four seasons, and winters here
are very cold. Historically in warmer wine regions, it was common for fermentations to begin in the autumn, finish in the winter, and be bottled up in the spring.
However, in Champagne, because of their cooler autumns and harsh winters, their fermentations merely went dormant. This meant that when the wines were bottled in the spring, there were sleeping yeast inside and a fair bit of sugar. The yeast would wake up once temperatures warmed up enough and resume fermenting, eating the sugar and producing bubbles making the final wine fizzy and cloudy.
This caused quite the conundrum for winemakers, because at the time bubbly wines were considered a wine flaw. It was also very dangerous, since the fragile glass bottles would often explode and injure cellar workers. Because of this, Champagne was called ‘the Devil’s wine.’ The monk Dom Perignon sought to avoid these explosions and made it his mission to stop his wines from fizzing. He didn’t succeed, but he developed growing practices and techniques that are still used in the region to this day.
Champagne producers had two choices – give up making wine or find a way to harness the bubbles. Luckily, they chose the latter!
Several innovations allowed for safer Champagne production and tastier wines. Firstly, in the 17th century, English glassmakers devised a way to make bottles that could withstand higher pressures. The French adopted these techniques and began producing the thicker (and safer!) Champagne bottles we know today. In the early 19th century, Veuve Cliquot engineered a way to make the wine less cloudy. Lastly in 1858, Louis Pasteur discovered that yeast were the culprits behind the fermentation process. His research led to the safe and predictable Méthode Traditionnelle process for making sparkling wines that’s still in use today.
Finally, ‘the Devil’s wine’ had been tamed.
Andre Clouet 'Chalky' Brut Champagne Gift Box
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Key Flavours
Peach, Brioche, Apple, Honeysuckle & many more
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Mix your case
Key Regions
Montagne de Reims, Côte des Blancs, Côte de Sézanne
Shop Champagne
Andre Clouet 'Chalky' Brut Champagne Gift Box
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