SPARKLING WINE – WHAT IS IT AND HOW IS IT MADE

What is sparkling wine? In short, it is wine that is carbonated. The fermentation process creates carbon dioxide. When making still wine, this carbon dioxide escapes into the atmosphere during the production process. When making sparkling wine, the objective is to keep the carbon dioxide in the wine, which produces carbonation, i.e., bubbles. There are three major methods for keeping this carbonation in the wine to create sparkling wine. Well, four, if you count injecting wine with carbon dioxide, but we will ignore that “method” as we would never sell that type of sparkling wine. Since our wine club selection includes three wines, we have chosen wines to represent each of these three methods.

Before diving in, though, let’s make something clear straightaway. Sparkling wine and Champagne are not synonymous. To some of you this may be ridiculously evident, but in our defense, as a wine retailer, we experience various customers asking for Champagne on a weekly basis and leaving the store with another type of sparkling wine because what they really meant to ask for was sparkling wine. Champagne is sparkling wine that is made in the Champagne region in France. It is simply one of many expressions of sparkling wine. Because of its name recognition, Champagne is quite expensive. As such, we could not make it work as one of our three Wine Club selections; however, one of our selections will feature the method in which it is made.

As you can imagine by the title, Champagne is made with this method, which is the most labor intensive of the three sparkling winemaking methods. Fun fact: the French petitioned the European Union to make it illegal for winemakers to say that their sparkling wine was made in the champenoise method, i.e., Méthode Champenoise, if it was not Champagne. So outside of the Champagne region, the method is called the Traditional Method… but it is the same exact method.

In the traditional method, two fermentations happen. First the winemaker ferments the grapes into wine. In most cases, the grapes they use to make the wine are not fully ripened because they do not need a robust “base” wine. After bottling this base wine, they add a “liqueur de tirage” which is a combination of must from the grapes, yeast, and some sugar. The bottle is then capped and a second fermentation occurs and the carbon dioxide byproduct is trapped in the bottle creating carbonation. Depending on the desired effect, the dead yeast, or lees, as well as other naturally occurring sediment from fermentation is kept in the capped bottle for an extended period to add targeted taste and esthetic characteristics. After this aging, the bottle is manipulated, referred to as riddling, so that the lees and sediment gravitate through the neck to the cap and the cap is removed and this mass of lees and other sediment is disgorged. Traditionally, riddling was done by hand, an excessively laborious process, but it is now mostly done with calibrated machines.

As a result, there is rarely a disgorgement process, which further speeds up the production process. However, there can be, and often is, a dosage added to the tank after the second fermentation, so that once a sparkling wine is bottled from the tank, production is over, and it is ready for sale. And the same nomenclature that is used for sparkling wine made by the traditional method is used to indicate the degree of sweetness of sparkling wine made by the charmat method.

The main difference that most drinkers note between sparkling wine made by the charmat method versus the traditional method is that the former has less concentrated bubbles; however, it is possible to create tighter bubbles with longer time in the tank.

We selected the quintessential wine made by the charmat method: Prosecco. In fact, besides the tank method, another popular term for the charmat method is the metodo Italiano (Italian method) because Prosecco is an Italian appellation. The Prosecco DOC (denominazione di origine controllata) production zone includes the village of Prosecco, near the city of Trieste in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, and spans nine provinces in the Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia regions of northeastern Italy. Within the Prosecco appellation are sub-appellations as well as gradations, i.e., DOCG (denominazione di origine controllata garantita). The Glera grape varietal is the only varietal used in the appellation; in fact, the varietal itself is often erroneously called the Prosecco grape.

As you’ve already probably gathered by the description, pet nats are natural. No additional sugars, yeasts or preservatives are added as they are with the second fermentations and dosages for the other methods. Pet nats are also low in alcohol by volume (ABV) as the one fermentation involves no extra aging and manipulation as would happen with still wine in which liquid evaporates leaving a higher concentration of ABV, and there is not the second fermentation that adds alcohol in the traditional and charmat sparkling winemaking methods. The other prominent characteristic that distinguishes pet nat from the other two methods is the perlage, the bubbles factor. Pet nats are not as carbonated as sparkling wines made by the other two methods. Lastly, many pet nat makers choose to keep the wine unfiltered when they bottle it, and to let the sediment from lees stay in the bottle. However, some winemakers do choose to filter before bottling and some also disgorge the lees and other sediment after it finishes fermenting in the capped bottle. We selected a pet nat that was neither filtered nor disgorged, so that you can experience the pettilant naturel method in its most ancestral form.