Drink Champagne or Sparkling Wine... Find Excuses to Celebrate

Copyright and branding are important issues for all involved in creative activities.  Wine making is also a creative activity.  So, unless your sparkling wine is from the Champagne region of France, you are not actually drinking Champagne;  You are drinking a sparkling wine.  The Champagne makers follow a very difficult method called Methode Champenoise, and sparkling wines from other areas in France are not even called Champagne.  They are called Mousseux. 

Sparkling sounds perfectly awesome.  We could have called these wines fizzy wines or carbon-dioxide-captured-inside wines.  Let the sparkling wines just sparkle.

And, you can find awesome sparkling wines made throughout the world, but I will only talk about the ones I had a chance to drink.  I like non-vintage relatively cheap sparkling wines because I drink them often. 

What is it about Champagne and sparkling wines we absolutely love?  Those tiny little bubbles floating up when we drink? Yep. adults and children alike... we all love bubbles of many forms!

Champagne is mostly blended wine (with whites and reds), but you may also see Blanc de blancs (made only from white grapes, Chardonnay 100%), Blanc de noirs (made only from red grapes), and rose (has some red wine added to give it a pink color).

Champagnes can be dry (Brut, most popular), medium dry (Sec), and Sweet (demi-sec, great with desserts)

In general, the more white grapes, the lighter they style, more acidic and more elegant. But, those with more red grapes are heavier and sometimes can be rich in flavor.  

Champagne can also be vintage or non-vintage.  Vintage means that all of the grapes are from the same year, and the wine is aged for 36 months.  Non-vintage means that the wines can come from several different years.  But, it has to be aged at least one year.

Sparkling wines are made all over the world.  That's a great news because you can try a variety of them for very good prices.

ITALIAN

Prosecco: sweet Italian sparkling wine.  Best with appetizers before dinner.

Asti Spumanti: sweet to semi-sweet Italian sparkling wine. best with sweet desserts, or some just drink it by itself.

SPANISH (AS IN FROM SPAIN)

CAVA: Spanish sparkling wine that is light and fruity. I personally like CAVA.  They are cheap and have plenty of character.

SPARKLING WINES MADE IN THE USA

Most large winemakers carry their own sparkling wines.  Most are perfectly fine if you just want to drink sparkling wine with no special reason or occasions... Why not!

(1) Ask a wine shop owner.  This sounds obvious, but you would be surprised how many people are reluctant to ask for a recommendation.  Now that you have a very very basic information, what he/she tells you may make sense.  The store also knows what they have for different occasions.

(2) Except for very rare special occasions like weddings, the best is non-vintage sparkling wine that you can afford without much fuss.  However, this is one case that the name on the label is important. Since they are blended wines, the shipper (names on the labels like Moet Chandon, Piper heidsieck and Roederer) decides the quality of wine, and usually you can't go wrong with those names.

(3) Champagne is very versatile with food, and some are recommend with cheese, grilled fish with light sauce and even with dessert. Most are dry (Brut) and fine with aperitif, but if you have sweet sparkling wines, they are perfect for wedding cakes and cakes in general.

Do you ever wonder why wine glasses are shaped as such?

There is a long neck shaped (flute) and also fine tulip-shaped glasses.

It turns out that there is some logic to this.  Since someone somewhere in wine industry worked very hard to keep those bubbles inside the bottle, we don't want them to disappear into the air as soon as we pour them in wine glasses.  Longer the glasses, the longer bubbles stay in the glass.  And you can see those tiny bubbles coming up from the bottom... looks very elegant, too.

There are wide and shallow shaped Champagne glasses, too, and the rumor has it that they molded to the shape of Marie Antoinette's boobs or Helen of Troy.  These are traditional ones and go very well with much sweeter sparkling wines, but I personally prefer dry.