I have never knowingly turned down a glass of champagne. In that respect, like so many others, I am my mother's daughter. She once went on a diet where the only alcohol that she could drink was champagne. It really wasn't the greatest hardship.
So when my boyfriend suggested that we spent our Saturday afternoon at a champagne tasting run by the Wine & Food Academy, I was hardly going to say no.
The traditional but entirely false story is that champagne was discovered by a Benedictine monk called Dom Perignon (or 'Dompers' as we now refer to him) in about 1700. He wasn't happy with the quality of one year's wine, so added some sugar and yeast to the mixture which produced the bubbles. He is reported to have taken a sip and shouted 'Come quickly my brothers, I'm tasting the stars' which is why a lot of corks and bottles have a design involving stars. Please note that this is the first of a series of interesting champagne facts that I will be bringing you.
It's a pretty nice story only slightly hampered by the fact that there are reports of champagne being made in London about 50 years before. In reality, the most likely explanation for the invention of champagne is the fact that there is a lot of old yeast in cellars and if it's not cleaned out properly, it can get into the bottles causing the gasses to build up. The process for making champagne is, no doubt, incredibly complex but the basic gist is that you add some yeast and some sugar to wine, put it in a cellar and give it a little turn every now and then and in a couple of years, you will have champagne.
Champagne is made with the holy trinity of chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot menier grapes; the latter two are red grapes but they are used without their skins to make that beautiful amber liquid that we all know and love. Vintage champagne, interestingly, only uses chardonnay and pinot noir grapes for reasons which I didn't write down and had obviously had too much champagne to remember.
Our afternoon started with a warm introduction from our tutor, Chris Hambleton, who let us into some of the biggest secrets of the professional wine tasters
Is it pale yellow and fizzy? Does it smell a bit like wine? You might well have yourself a glass of champagne then.
With this excellent advice in mind, we discovered that our first champagne, a Nicholas Feuillatte Brut NV, was indeed pale yellow and fizzy and it did smell like wine. We were taught how to properly aerate the wine as we drink by taking in a breath with a small amount of champagne in our mouths so that we could properly appreciate all the flavours and then we were off.
Our first champagne, the afore mentioned Nicholas Feuillatte Brut NV, was an example of a fairly mass-market standard bottle of champagne. It was perfectly light and fruity and made a very acceptable aperitif. From there, we moved through some of the big boys (a Pommery Brut NV), a co-operative of various wine makers and a couple of small vineyards before trying some organic champagnes. These were sturdier beasts designed to stand up against food. We also tried a couple of sweeter champagne before tackling the home straight with a few bottles of vintage. The full list with my tasting notes (and scores out of five) is below.
Nicholas Feuillatte Brut NV - Pale and light, quite acidic but pleasant. 3/5
Champagne Pannier Brut NV Made by a co-operative, rich honey smell but much lighter in flavour. 4/5
Pommery Brut NV - Quite a smokey/mineral taste with hints of apple and cherry. Not my cup of tea. 2/5
Martell Brut NV - Pale but rich umami smell. Obviously more aged than others with a fuller flavour. Very nice. 4.5/5
Boulard Brut NV Les Murgiers - Organic, almond smell with hints of cinnamon. Okay. 3/5
Boulard Blanc de Blancs - Organic, similar to the Boulard Brut but lighter. Better. 3.5/5
Lanson Rose NV - Quite soft and fruity but with a strange after taste 2.5/5
Louis Roederer Riche Reserve NV - A demi-sec so quite sweet. Smells like cork and tastes like damp. 1/5
Nicholas Feuillatte 2004 Vintage - Rich, full smell but strangely tasteless 2/5
Champagne Jacquart Oenetheque 2000 - Smells toasty but tastes acidic. Needs a few years to develop flavours. 3/5
Lanson Gold Label 1997 - Very acidic because of the production method. Smelt strangely of cauliflower. Most unpleasant. 1/5
Joseph Perrier Vintage 1998 - Lots of pinot noir in the blend so very fruity. Will keep well. 4/5
None of the champagnes were that expensive - ranging from about £20 to £50 a bottle but it was interesting to see how everyone had completely different ideas about what they smelt/taste/liked.
Most of the champagne that we tried had 'NV' after the name rather than a year. The 'NV' stands for non-vintage which I would have assumed meant that it wouldn't be very good. Actually all it means is that the wine maker may have used some wine from the previous year's harvests along with this year's grapes. This means that you can be assured of consistency - when you buy a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, you know what it will taste like. Vintage champagnes are just made with the grapes of a single year but this doesn't mean that they're any good - if it's a bad year weather-wise (too much rain at the wrong time or too hot/cold) then the end product will be much worse than any NV champagne. FYI, 2008 is supposed to be the best vintage of the decade although bottles won't start appearing for a year or so.
We also talked about some of the difference between champagne and other sparkling wines; it's partly the
method - prosecco, for example, is made in a large vat rather than being made in the bottle. New world sparkling white wines are often decanted from the bottle they were fermented in to a new bottle which means they have less of a yeasty, creamy flavour. The champagne makers also have very strict rules they have to follow such as not adding any sugar to the fermentation process which might improve the quality of a bad harvest. Apparently, in really bad years, the supermarkets are banned from selling more than one bag of sugar to a single individual in case anyone is trying to break the rules.
Along the way, there were some fascinating tidbits of information. Did you know that it's technically illegal to make a red champagne? Also pink champagne? A complete rip off. It's a marketing gimmick and you end up paying twice as much as regular champagne for a wine that is of exactly the same quality.
As for champagne bottles themselves, they are often a dark colour to prevent too much light from reaching the liquid inside as it might interfere with the chemical reactions taking place. The reason for the foil around the top of bottles is because a small amount of champagne would often be lost during the removal of the dead yeast cells after the fermentation process. The foil was to fool customers into believing that they were getting a full bottle of wine. The EU has now put an end to such hijinks and insists that bottles are topped up so you get the full measure.
Another fun fact- when you take the cork out, the shape will give you an indication of the age of the champagne. If the cork remains pretty straight and you can easily push it back in the bottle, that's a old champagne. If it bounces back, you have yourself a bottle of recently made fizz. The old myth about keeping a half-finished bottle of champagne fizzy overnight by putting a silver spoon in it was, sadly, debunked. Champagne will stay fizzy overnight whether you put anything in the bottle or not. The story most likely has its origins in the moustachioed days of the London clubs where gentlemen would order a bottle of champagne and then mark it as theirs with one of their family's silver spoons.
Two of the most important tips as far as I concerned revolved around what to do with a cheap bottle of nasty champagne. First of all, try putting a strawberry in the glass. It will improve the flavour no end and take away some of the bubbles. The other tip was to use it to make champagne cocktails but to use good quality mixers. Making a buck's fizz/mimosa with good quality champagne is a waste and there ain't nothing that's going to improve the taste of nasty orange juice.
My only complaint is that my boyfriend has since developed a stinking cold and therefore we have been unable to put our new champagne-tasting skills to good use but I am sure that we will make up for it in time.