Would a champagne by another name taste as sweet?
“I wouldn’t wash the family dog with it,” said the New England innkeeper where Mrs. Vino and I had our wedding reception. Cava, the object of his condescension, is a sparkling white wine from Spain. Although sparkling white wine and champagne are essentially the same thing why are they different in the innkeeper’s mind? Is it worth paying through the nose for champagne?
People in the wine industry love the last quarter of the year. That’s because we love to drink wine at our celebrations. Almost three-quarters of the year’s sales occur in the last three months. While Thanksgiving and Christmas may be limited by country or religion, New Year’s Eve is a global bash and champagne dominates it. “If everyone in the world had just one glass of champagne…” Or so the logic went for the millennium when sales were brisk and rumors spread about a potential champagne shortage. In the end, the shortage did not occur and the millennium left the producers with a hangover.
Champagne, as in the stuff that James Bond drinks, comes from the Champagne region just east of Paris. In 1911 residents of several communities excluded from the official growing area staged an angry protest and troops had to be brought in to quell the demonstrations. Although those residents’ zones were ultimately included in Champagne, they were the first of many groups worldwide who would try to crack into the prestige of the term. The Champagne producers have been able to rebuff other worldwide producers of the bubbly stuff through their exclusive claims to their origins in the Champagne region. As a result we are left with Cava, Sekt, spumante, and sparkling white wine from the rest of the world.
Champagne producers obscure the varietals that they use, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. “Blanc de blanc” means it is made from Chardonnay grapes while “blanc de noir” means Pinot Noir has been included. The producers also obscure vintages as the majority of champagne comes in a non-vintage form. As a result, the champagne houses are the very model of the corporate brand that so many New World producers seek to emulate. Just give them a couple of centuries and they’re bound to catch up.
Paying through the nose is common for champagnes but not always necessary. Yes, the likes of Cristal, vintage Dom Perignon and Pol Roger are wonderful, but they are well in excess of $100 a bottle. From California, Domaine Chandon (the US arm of Moët & Chandon, part of the LVMH luxury goods empire) and Pacific Echo (now owned by Clicquot, another part of LVMH) both offer good sparklers around $12. From Spain, Louis de Vernier has a good dry Cava for $9, but Cava uses the local grape varietals that some people, such as my innkeeper, find objectionable. However, the Brits have grown to love Cava over the past decade. In the highly competitive UK market, Cava now accounts for 47% of sparkling wine sales, up from only 7% in 1991 according to a recent report on winebusiness.com.
If you feel the need to get your bubbly from Champagne itself, good values are available around $25. Look for the non-vintage brut (dry) wines from Piper-Heidsieck, Louis Roederer, and Lansonfor a particularly good price to quality ratio.
