Champagne is special. The iconic sparkling wine is mimicked all over the map but rarely made quite as well as in its native northeast France. The production method is precise and slow but yields impressive results — festive wines worth busting out the saber for.
While it’s tough to deny the quality of a good champagne, the style has gotten a little carried away. Like a good Napa Valley Cab, quality champagne can fetch astronomical prices, especially in vintage offerings. There’s a celebrity around the stuff, with stages like music videos and the Oscars long playing host to the stuff, but it’s tough to deny the esteem when you get a taste of the good stuff.
Drinking champagnee alone is a joyous experience that begins with the pop of the cork, followed by the sizzle of the carbonation. It’s a celebratory drink long associated with special occasions, drunk out of trophies after big victories, and raised as a toast during weddings. But what exactly is champagne?
What is champagne?
Champagne is arguably the most famous sparkling wine on the planet. It hails from the Champagne region, located in the north of France. The wine is made primarily from cool-climates grapes like Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Pinot Meunier. The process is involved to say the least, spanning the course of several years and involving everything from dosage (sweetness added to find balance in flavor) to riddling, or rotating the neck of the bottle to remove sediment.
The Champagne region settled on the Méthode Champenoise approach back in the 17th Century, and it has been the go-to for many sparkling wine regions since. The age-old process involves a secondary fermentation in the bottle, which happens over the course of several years and yields incredible flavors and textures when done right. The limestone-centric soils of Champagnee are another big reason for the high quality of the resulting wines, affording them palpable minerality which plays off the biscuit-like flavors of the yeast beautifully.
Of course, there are other great sparkling wine regions. Champagne only exists in Champagnee, by law, but increasingly, domains like England and the U.S. are being celebrated for their fizzy wines, joining longstanding players like Italy, Spain, and Germany as high-end producers.
What styles are there?
There are several styles of champagne worth knowing about. If you like a good dry wine, look for the word “brut” on the label. The most dry options are called brut, brut nature, and extra brut, all with relatively small amounts of residual sugar. The sec style is sweeter, with some 17-32 grams of sugar per liter of the finished product. A sweeter option is called demi-sec, while the sweetest of the bunch is doux, a dessert sparkling wine of sorts with more than 50 grams of sugar per liter.
The dryer brut styles remain far and away the most consumed, and within that realm, there are several options, from blends of all three grapes mentioned above to Blanc de Blancs, a champagne mainly only of white grapes like Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc. A Blanc de Noirs is made from red grapes like Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir. You may see Rosé in the mix, too, which, of course, will involve some semblance of red fruit to achieve the signature pink hue (Champagne Billecart-Salmon makes a great one).
How to serve champagne
When it comes to champagne, think of it as ice cold. Some sommeliers might split hairs about the exact temperature, preferring something slightly warmer to enjoy the entirety of aromas and flavors on hand, but generally speaking, cold is good. Perhaps more important is the act of opening the bottle. While cracking one vigorously and letting the wine torpedo out is a sure way to start the party, it’s also a great way to lose a lot of great wine. Unless you’re rolling in dough, we suggest a more modest crack of the cork (the top wine stewards do it almost silently) so as not to spill a drop. Pour into a proper flute (or coupe, if you’re old-timey) and let the good times roll. You can flash chill a bottle in an ice bucket — and keep it there on a hot evening — and if you plan to hold on to a partial bottle, be sure to re-cork securely and keep it in the fridge.
How to store champagne
Herve Danton is the cellar master at Champagne Lanson, one of the oldest champagne houses in the land. He says proper storage is key with champagne, as it maintains the aromatic bouquet of the wine, not to mention the mouthfeel and quality of the bubbles. “The aromatic development can be accelerated and sometimes degraded, particularly if the wine is exposed to light for a long time, ” he says. This is an unfortunate condition known as “goût de lumière.”
What’s a good storage temperature? Danton says about 12 degrees Celsius, or 54 degrees F. “Keeping this constant temperature is also essential in avoiding the de-evolution of the aromatic bouquet and changes in the texture of the bubbles,” Danton adds. Humidity is also key, with a suggested level of 60-80 percent. “Below this level, there is a risk of problems with the cork seal and oxidative aging for the wine,” he says. “It is possible to use humidifiers — like for cigar cellars. The right device will depend on the surface area of the cellars.”
Store the bottles on their sides and keep away from direct light as much as possible.
Classic pairings
There are some pairings you can’t go wrong with when it comes to champagne. Classics include caviar or truffle pasta. The wine also does great with shellfish rich cheeses, and mushroom dishes. Lately, there’s been a lower-brow movement that’s shown the merits of pairing up a good champagne with something like popcorn or potato chips. Essentially, if there’s something buttery and salty out there (we see you, lobster), champagne is ready for the call-up.
If you like champagne, you’ll love our related features on British sparkling wine and Cap Classique wines. There are great effervescent options all over the wine map, often with different characteristics thanks to unique grape blends and production angles. If you don’t have anything to celebrate, simply opening one of these fine bottles is a celebration in and of itself.
