Champagne and Co. Back in the early eighteenth century, walking through a Champagne cellar without an iron mask on one’s face was akin to, in today’s terms, running across a football stadium without one’s pants on – pure insanity. Sparkling winemaking back then was a very inexact science and the biggest problem producers had was that the bottles kept bursting from all the pressure inside. Folklore credits a blind monk for the ‘invention’ of the sparkling wine which we know today as ‘Champagne’. That monk, in actual fact, devoted his entire adult life to keeping the pesky bubbles out of the wine as he worked in a local abbey as Cellarmaster and it was his goal to craft fine wines... without bubbles. Thankfully, he failed and region’s industry responded by getting stronger bottles for the wine to prevent them from bursting. That monk has gone down in gastronomic history. He is the infamous Dom Pérignon. While a bottle of “Dom” sells in the area of $200.00 a bottle in Canada’s liquor stores, rest assured that you don’t have to be flush with cash to enjoy a fine bottle of bubbly these days. Of course, to be authentic “Champagne”, a wine must be made in the region of Champagne, France and produced exclusively from Champenoise grapes. That said, there is a myriad sparkling wine made all over the world using the very same technique that makes real Champagne and I am here to tell you all about these effervescent alternates. More than a hundred years after Champagne’s famous sparkling wine was established; the Penedès region in north-eastern Spain borrowed a page from its neighbour’s book, creating a wine called Cava. Crisp and dry, this Spanish bubbly is often referred to in the wine world as Champagne’s “Little Brother”. It is made using the respected ‘Méthode Champenoise’ with a similar (though some say less polished) outcome than its more established older sibling. Similar stories hail in great numbers from France’s neighbouring countries of Italy, Germany, Austria and more. But the bubbles don’t stop in Europe! Savvy winemakers across the globe jumped on board with this effervescent extravaganza, crafting sparkling wines across the continents, from dry to sweet ranging through sorts of qualities and styles. Canada, Australia, South Africa and the United States are but a few of the New World wine regions to have crafted sparkling wines which emulate the shimmering success that was first discovered by Monsieur Pérignon back in his day. From the Italian hills of Asti to the Australian flats of Yalumba almost every region on this earth produces some form of sparkling wine, and they each write the labels in their own language. These labels can be confusing on so many levels. Sometimes labelled, ‘Vin Mousseux’, ‘Crémant’ or even ‘Frizzante’, all of these terms indicate that the wine inside is – in plain English – bubbly. It’s a good thing the bottles have those big corks in them or we might never notice the fizzies from the flats. The key thing to watch for on sparkling wine labels is the terminology that relates to the dryness of the wine. After all, it would be quite a shock when expecting that one is about to indulge in a crisp, dry bottle of Champagne to pop open the cork and taste that it’s sweet. So, in general, ‘Brut Nature’ or ‘Brut’ means the wine will taste bone dry while ‘Extra Dry’ means a wine will taste slightly sweet. Adding more confusion to the mix, ‘Sec’ on the label (which literally translates to mean “dry”) means that the wine is in fact quite sweet, while ‘Demi-Sec’ (translating to “half-dry”) is really very sweet indeed. If you’ve got a palate for the sweeter bubblies then you’re in luck. There are a lot of bottles out there for you – German Sekt, French Demi-Sec and Italian Spumanti to name a few. Ranging vastly in quality, it’s best to approach these wines bearing in mind that you’re popping the cork to have fun, not to discriminate. So plan your party – this is the season to celebrate! And when all your wine shopping is done, chill a bottle, pop the cork, and then raise a toast to the blasted failure of our old friend Dom, without which we would all be drinking flat wine today. Champagne’s Carbonated Counterparts Graham Beck Brut $17 – $25 Sumac Ridge Steller’s Jay Brut $22 – $25 Mionetto Il Prosecco $14 – $18 Banrock Station Sparkling Shiraz $13 – $17 Martini & Rossi Asti Spumante $13 – $15
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