Beyond bubbles: the essence of Champagne

Sparkling wines are on the crest of a wave in the UK. In a shrinking market for wine consumption overall here between 2009 and 2013, sparkling wines have been the only growth category; and they are forecast to continue the positive trend in future.

Prosecco has been the fizz making all the noise in recent years, but, perhaps surprisingly, in tough economic times, Champagne has managed to hold its ground against its rivals, and the UK remains its number one export market.

Sparkling wine can be made anywhere in the world, in a variety of ways. Just what is it about Champagne in particular that keeps us so loyal and fascinated?

First of all is the location of Champagne, the furthest north of France’s quality winemaking regions. The climate here is most definitely marginal for wine production – a potential disadvantage which has been turned into a virtue, as barely ripe, high acid and fairly neutral wines make perfect raw material for turning into high quality sparkling wine.

The chalk bedrock of Champagne also plays a key role. Chalk makes for poor soils - often an environment in which vines give the best quality grapes; chalk won’t hold onto too much moisture in this rather rainy part of France – vines hate having wet feet; yet it does provide nicely regulated access to moisture to help prevent vine stress in times of drought. Finally, chalk makes for easily dug, ideally humid underground cellars – the perfect dark and cool environment in which wines can evolve and mature slowly.

Most Champagne is made from a blend of three grape varieties, two of them black-skinned: Pinot Noir, which gives power, structure and longevity; and Pinot Meunier, an earlier-ripening variety which gives expressive fruitiness, especially early in a Champagne’s life. They are joined by the white variety Chardonnay, which provides elegance and finesse. Together they complement each other to make a harmonious whole.

The Champagne region also has a particular structure in terms of the people who make it. Most vines are owned by one of the more than 15,000 individual growers across the region – but we rarely see their names on the bottles, as most sell their grapes to one of the “grandes marques”, the Champagne household names.

The houses can therefore draw on a variety of wines from vines from across the region in order to make up their final Champagne blend. As well as varying the proportion of the grape varieties used, the same variety will have a different flavour profile when grown in different soil, with a different aspect and so on.

Champagne gets its sparkle from a second fermentation of those light, high acid base wines, which occurs in each bottle. Before it can be released and sold as Champagne, though, the wine has to stay in bottle, where the wine interacts with the sediment of dead yeast cells (or lees) which, over time, contribute complex, toasty flavours which are typical of Champagne.

And we can’t forget the historical perspective. The people who make Champagne today are carrying on a tradition which goes back hundreds of years, during which time the region has dedicated itself to this single style of wine. It has also built up a powerful mythology; associations with famous historical figures which help to set Champagne apart from other “mere wines”.

So there is no single “magic bullet” which sets Champagne apart from all other sparkling wines.

Other parts of the world can make sparkling wine using the same traditional method, with the same blend of grape varieties. They can even, like right here in Southeast England, have the same chalky soils and marginal climate. But Champagne itself can never be replicated: the unique combination of factors, both natural and manmade, which exists there, is, in the end, what creates the essence of Champagne. 

Matching food to the wines of Touraine

Food and wine matching can be a minefield.  Recommending food to go with wine can often either be alarmingly precise (“perfect with a herb and polenta-crusted roast rack of lamb”) or hopelessly wide-ranging (“serve with red meats, stews and casseroles”).   I don’t find either of those approaches particularly helpful, but now, having set out my objections, I have set myself the task of coming up with some food and wine matches of my own – without being hoist by my own petard.

Domaine Paget Sparkling Rosé NV

This delicate but definitively pink fizz conjures up peach melba, with its aromas and flavours of peach and raspberry.  Just off-dry, it nevertheless has a dryish, peppery finish after the fruit salad flavours.  This is an easy-going, flavourful sparkler and I would frankly be happy to drink a glass of this on its own, or with pre-dinner nibbles.

Led by the flavours of the wine, I first assembled a post-modern peach melba of nectarine, raspberry and peppercorns, which was perfectly delicious with the wine – however, this falls at the first hurdle I set out above (too specific).  And at the end of the day, would you really dish this up at the dinner table?

I decided to go for a more free-form kind of match, allying the fun and user-friendly robustness of the wine to the food that went with it.  What I came up with was an Anglo-French culinary mash-up:  bangers and French bean vinaigrette salad.

The salad is the kind of thing you’d find all over France on bistro menus – still hot, cooked French beans mixed into a punchy, mustardy vinaigrette with a finely-chopped garlic clove and a few capers.  The cooling beans take up the flavours of the dressing and their vivid green contrasts nicely with the toad-skin coloured capers.  The sharpness of the vinaigrette brings out the sweetness of the beans.

On this occasion I plonked a couple of sausages alongside the beans but, frankly, the meat involved is not that important.  I liked the way the sweet meatiness of the bangers rubbed along with the hint of sweetness in the wine.  Usually I’d go for a red wine with sausages, but the pink sparkling stood up to this combination pretty well, bouncing off the zingy vinaigrette.

But overall, what made this work well was the feel of the wine and food together – fun, no nonsense, unpretentious and uncomplicated, yet making the whole thing more of an occasion.  That’s what I call a successful food and wine match.

Calvet Touraine Sauvignon Blanc 2012

Touraine Sauvignon Blanc must be one of the best value for money wines around.  Lacking the cachet of Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, or the familiarity of Kiwi Sauvignon, in Touraine you tend to get more wine for your money.

This one has a delicious nettley, floral aroma, followed by a zippy and zesty lemon palate, with a bit of lemon pith on the finish.  If you are looking for a wine to accompany fish and chips (or, even better, whitebait), this is your man.  However, I went down the route of a salad that I first came across in the Paris neighbourhood bar/restaurant that served as the office canteen for my place of work.  I can’t remember what it was called on the menu, but now I call it egg and bacon salad.

This is quick to knock together:  boil some eggs, grill some smoked streaky bacon until crisp and make a classic vinaigrette dressing.  Break the bacon up into bite-sized bits, toss everything together with plenty of young spinach leaves and the egg and that’s it.  What makes this work is grating the boiled egg – it sounds odd, but it really helps the egg to combine with the vinaigrette dressing and to get in amongst the spinach leaves.  I’ve never tried grating egg with anything other than one of these rotary graters, which holds the egg for you, avoiding grated fingers and eggs shooting around the kitchen.

Egg is renowned as a tricky ingredient for wine and so are earthy spinach leaves, but the Sauvignon managed not to clash with either.  In fact something (the sharpness of the dressing and salty bacon I think) brought out the weight of the fruit even more, making this a really delicious match.

But is it too specific?  I think the dressing is the key here, as I’ve also enjoyed Loire Sauvignons with salade niçoise which, other than the egg, has not much in common with the egg and bacon salad.  So if you’re having vinaigrette, think about giving a Touraine Sauvignon a go.

Stockist information

Domaine Paget Sparkling Rosé NV - £12.25 from Berry Bros & Rudd

Calvet Touraine Sauvignon Blanc 2012 - £8.99 from Tesco

Barcelona Supper Club

Our Indian Summer may have fizzled out, but before it did, I got the chance to indulge in an evening of Barcelona-themed food and drink, courtesy of the Codorniu Supper Club.

Over the course of a single evening, I genned up on Codorniu's range of Cavas, cooked some authentic Catalan food and - the highlight - learned how to carve that Spanish delicacy, Jamon Iberico.

I wouldn't say that I'm now an expert and ready to be let loose on my own whole ham, worth around 400-500 Euros.  However, I made a fair fist of producing some wafer-thin slices under the watchful eye of Master Carver Chuse Valvor.  The best part, of course, is that you get to eat the ham.

The Master Carver at work

Looking and learning

Iberico is a style of cured ham produced by the pata negra or black pig, which grazes in the cork oak forests which populate just four provinces in west and southwest Spain.  Over the winter the pigs snaffle all the acorns which the trees produce and this part of their diet seems to be key in producing the sweet nuttiness of the final ham.  Once slaughtered, the hams are cured in sea salt for up to four years, losing over half their original moisture content.

Putting it into practice

Of course you don't need to know all this in order to enjoy the melting, sweet-savouriness of Jamon Iberico.  But it does help to give an understanding of why it is so expensive.

Over the course of the evening, our three groups each helped to cook and then serve one course of our Catalan meal.  We started with a delicious fresh wild mushroom broth and moved onto a main course of duck breast with pears and spinach cooked with sultanas and pinenuts.  My small contribution was towards the dessert of walnut custard cream dessert, which was described by Rachel McCormack, of Catalan Cooking, as rice pudding using ground walnuts instead of rice.  You'll have to be the judge of how delicious that sounds, as I had to head home before it was served so that I could catch the last train home.

It wasn't just the food and drink that was Catalan, the timing of the evening meant that we didn't sit down to our first course until around 10pm, in true Spanish style.   

If you fancy a go yourself, Codorniu are running a Supper Club open to all at L'Atelier des Chefs on 16th November.  For details visit the Codorniu website on www.codorniu.co.uk or go to the facebook page:  www.facebook.com/TheBarcelonaClubByCodorniu.

Pick of the (fizzy) pops

Champagne may be the wine of kings and the king of wines, but there are times when you want to create a celebratory mood with the evocative pop of a cork, without breaking the bank. So what are the options?

Traditional method wines are made in the same way as Champagne but, because they are made outside the specified geographical area of Champagne, cannot call themselves that. To help consumers, many will use the term traditional method, or a variant of it, on the bottle. It would be so much more helpful, nevertheless, if such wines could be labelled “méthode champenoise” or “Champagne method”, but even such admiring use of the word is outlawed by the official body charged with protecting the Champagne name worldwide.

Cava
Top of any bargain-hunting fizz shopper’s list is Cava. Yours for around a fiver, or barely more, there are plenty of bottles out there to choose from. Cava is made in the same way as Champagne, but the grapes used are different: macabeo, xarello and parellada (hardly classic or well-known), though some also add a little chardonnay (one of the Champagne trio of grapes) to their blend. In what seems to be proof that the traditional method is no guarantee of quality, Cavas just don’t resemble Champagnes in any meaningful way. The grapes used must have a large part to play and unfortunately they are either excessively neutral, or rather earthy and with a tell-tale burnt rubber character. So, despite the low price, I would rather not drink Cava – unless it’s as a base for a buck’s fizz, where its neutral character is a virtue, or any earthiness is masked by orange juice.

Crémant
A step up in quality from Cava is the wide range of sparkling wines made around the world in largely the same mould as Champagne. The closest, geographically speaking, is crémant.

Crémant is the term used to describe any sparkling wine made in France and using the same production method as Champagne, but outside the Champagne region. Burgundy, home of chardonnay and pinot noir for its renowned still white and red wines, uses these same grapes to make crémants that are a fair copy of Champagne, with perhaps greater weight of fruit and a touch less elegance. Majestic list the ultra-reliable Louis Bouillot Perle de Vigne Crémant de Bourgogne NV for £11.99, or £7.99 if you buy two. For £10.99 you can try the same producer’s (they seem to have this market sewn up) 2005 Perle Rare at Waitrose. This last also lists Cave de Lugny Crémant de Bourgogne NV Blanc de Blancs (ie made from chardonnay only) for £8.99.

Other French regions make their own crémants, based on their regional speciality grapes. In the Loire, chenin blanc dominates, while Alsace crémants are usually predominantly pinot blanc – though Tesco has an interesting Finest* Alsace crémant made entirely from Riesling for £8.99.

Champagne lite
Champagne houses themselves are not slow to spot an opportunity to extend their brand and there are a number of New World outposts of names which you might recognize from closer to home. If you fancy a taste of Champagne expertise at a (slight) discount, then give one of these a go. Mumm Cuvée Napa is a reliable performer, with good fruit expression and great drinkability – Waitrose list it for £11.99, Majestic has it for the same price, but down to £8.99 if you buy two. Green Point is Moet & Chandon’s parent company’s Australian sparkler – the 2004 vintage is £19.49, or £12.99 if you buy two, at Majestic; or £13.99 for a single bottle at Waitrose. Arguably top of the quality tree is Roederer Quartet, which will set you back £18.99 at Waitrose, £19.99 for a single bottle at Majestic, down to £14.99 if you buy two.

New World sparklers
We’re in danger here of approaching Champagne prices, so bargain hunters should perhaps head for true New World expressions of the traditional method. One of the stalwarts of the style is Lindauer Special Select or Special Reserve: it’s undergoing a name change, so you may see it called either. In any case this wine is predominantly pinot noir, topped up with chardonnay and has the most delightful blush of negligée pink. The strawberries and cream nose gives way to a more seriously savoury palate, perfect with smoked salmon. You can pick this up at Wine Rack for £11.99 each or £7.99 at their 3 for 2 price; £9.99 at Waitrose, though it will be down to £7.49 from 3rd December; £9.99, or £7.49 if you buy two, at Majestic.

Home grown
An honourable mention must to our own English sparkling wines, which have been improving steadily for a number of years. Our marginal climate for grape ripening becomes a virtue when making sparkling wines, which need high levels of acidity rather than full ripeness to be successful. The wines are made in the same way as Champagne and often using the classic Champagne grape varieties of pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay. On the other hand, our domestic wine industry is small-scale and cannot produce wines in such quantity that the prices can compete with the New World – you just cannot make quality sparkling wine here for under ten quid. However, in an effort to boost our economy it is your duty to try at least one of these: Chapel Down Brut NV, £19.99, or £13.33 at the 3 for 2 price at Wine Rack delivers a creamy nose and a fruity palate with some spice courtesy of the distinctly un-Champagne-y Reichensteiner grape. Ridgeview, based near Burgess Hill, make a creditable range of sparklers, including the chardonnay-dominated Ridgeview Merrett Bloomsbury 2005/6, available at Waitrose for £19.99.