Don't be sour on Champagne. Bubbly doesn't have to be so brutish.
By CHRIS SHERMAN
Published December 28, 2003
[Times files]
There is one sad fact of the holidays that has been hidden for too long: Some people don't like Champagne.
Imagine the heartbreak of bubble deprivation. Or perhaps you don't need to because you suffer holidays without sparkle every year, and at all the other occasions when the good times roll and the bubbly flows, and you say, "No thanks, not for me."
Pressed for why, you appear a killjoy: "I don't like the way it tastes. And I can't believe you do, either. Champagne's not fun, it's . . . it's . . . sour."
There it is, that unpleasant word.
Yet it's true. Most Champagne and other sparkling wines are dry, sometimes bone dry, or what the wine world calls, rather honestly, brut, which is French for raw, rough, unpolished. If you press experts and those who make and peddle Champagne, they will describe this wine of so much frivolity as lean, spare, elegant or acidic.
Those who pucker at the smallest taste of it will call it sour.
It doesn't have to be. Champagne can be sweet, and once it was universally so.
"The Champagnes they were drinking in Mme. Clicquot's times were probably sweet," says Jean-Louis Carbonnier, a wine promoter who was born in Reims, France. "Even when I was growing up, 50 years ago, a lot of it was still sweet. That may be why it's attached to the end of the meal."
Today, however, 90 percent of French Champagne, and most of the bubbly in the rest of the world, is very dry. Yet there are sweeter sparklers worth searching out.
Granted, too much of that really cheap bottom-shelf bubbly is more bubble gum than bubbles, but better sparkling wines at $10 or $20, and even fine French Champagnes from $30 to $50 and more, are made in less dry styles as well.
Many savvy gourmets prefer the taste and texture of sweeter Champagnes with food, from desserts to hearty entrees, especially spicy Asian dishes. The White House often serves a lush cremant from Schramsberg in California at grand dinners.
So if tart, dry Champagne turns you off, you don't need a 12-step program, just a different bottle. You can drink as dry or as sweet as you want.
Buying Champagne confuses consumers because although it's almost all brut, sparklers are divided into many categories. The Champenoise have rightly insisted that Champagne means only the wine made in their particular chunk of northeastern France. After that, the wines vary widely: nonvintage vs. vintage (and which vintage and how mature), blanc de noirs vs. blanc de blancs, chardonnay vs. pinot noir, and house styles from flowery to heavy and robust. Then there are special cuvees, or blends, and prices that run from $80.
Ignore that for now. Sweetness is a much clearer and understandable distinction. In France, the grading is based on the measure of grams of sugar per liter, and the grade is printed on many bottles.
That doesn't make it easy. Some categories overlap, and the sweeter choices are complicated by a variety of names, most of which make no sense. Sweeter, nonbrut wines oddly can be labeled dry, extra dry and demi-sec. Doux, which means soft or gentle, is the sweetest.
Most sparkling wine from other parts of the world follows similar naming - most use brut to mean very dry - but nations and regions of origin provide clues, too. Italian sparkling proseccos, moscatos and brachettos have moderate sweetness (and are often designated dolce); most spumantes have much more. The vin mousseux and cremants from Vouvray and other French regions are more likely to have a touch of sweetness. German sekt is generally off-dry, and Spanish cavas are quite dry (yet, the lower acidity of the grapes can make them softer than the usual brut).
Other nonbruts are best known by proprietary brands that do not stress sweetness. Moet & Chandon White Star, the top seller in the United States, has always been extra-dry; Moet's Nectar Imperial is a demi-sec. Recently, Pommery has introduced for younger drinkers a hip blue minibottle called Pop, complete with a noisemaker cork. And the Chandon winery in California is riding high with its newest wine, an extra-dry sparkler called Riche.
So you need not be sparkle-deprived anymore. Or ashamed, although you will be counter to current fashion, and Champagne has always had a lot to do with fashion.
Until the middle of the 19th century, all Champagne was sweet. This started to change in the 1860s and 1870s, when Mme. Pommery discovered a preference for drier styles in London, the export market that has called the tune for many wines. By the middle of the 20th century, brut had replaced most of the sweets.
To admit a preference for sweet in any wine today, especially Champagne, is seen as a lack of sophistication by some. Wine merchants variously peg that sweet tooth to Americans broadly, the Midwest and the South specifically, or to a younger worldwide palate raised and ruined by Coca-Cola.
Yet they also know that there are many palates and many wine drinkers, especially in the United States, who "talk dry and drink sweet."
So, Sue Furdek of Chandon is careful when she pours the new Riche for customers. "I quickly learned if I describe it as slightly sweet, they'd ask for something drier even without tasting. The trick was not to call it sweet but to say it was richer. They loved it," she says.
Eva Bertran, an executive vice president for the Spanish Freixenet and its Napa brand, Gloria Ferrer, sees it, too.
"Pour a brut for some people and their teeth start chattering, but when you give them an extra-dry, their face lights up," she says.
Bertran grew up in Barcelona on cava: "It was the first thing I drank even before my mother's milk. . . . My father was in the room celebrating with a bottle," she says.
Cavas are traditionally very dry, often drier than most Champagnes, yet the Spanish winemaker knows some customers don't take to brut. It has two successful wines that are sweeter: The familiar black bottle Cordon Negro comes in brut and extra dry in the United States, and Carte Nevada is sold in brut and extra dry worldwide. Plus, it has added a spumante that is still sweeter.
If sugar is unmentionable in marketing, it is an integral part of wine, whether you can taste it or not. The fruit sugar in grapes ferments into alcohol in any wine. Sparkling wine has its own complicated, romanticized process that includes, for the best wines, a secondary fermentation in a capped bottle, which converts still more of the sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide.
In the final steps of the French methode Champenoise, more sugar arrives in what is called the dosage. This occurs when the cap of the bottle is quickly removed and the carbon dioxide built up in the bottle expels, or "disgorges," the dead yeast cells and other sediment from the fermentation, along with a bit of wine.
That leaves a little extra space in the bottle, which is just as quickly filled with the dosage, a mixture of cane sugar and about a teaspoon of still wine. This liqueur de tirage, or liqueur de expenditure, is added to preserve the wine in shipping, and in the process it sets the sweetness level.
The exact formula for that teaspoon, how much sugar, if any, and the quality of wine varies from maker to maker and among the blends in each house. It could be a portion of the same wine in the bottle set aside for this later use or a dollop of a fine, mature cuvee from a great vintage.
Finally, that bottle could have 0 or 10 grams of sugar per liter, as in the driest bruts; the 20 grams in most extra-dries; or the whopping 75 grams in some spumantes.
That's a wider range of sparklers than most of the pouters and doubters know. Explore the range, and you're bound to be sweet on one of them.
How sweet is it?
The sugar content of Champagne is indicated on labels by these terms, according to the Comite Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne, in rough order of sweetness. The measurement is grams per liter (1,000 ml), although most wine is sold in 750 ml bottles.
Extra brut/Brut Nature: 0 to 6 grams.
Extra dry: 12 to 20 grams.
Brut: less than 15 grams.
Sec (dry): 17 to 35 grams.
Demi-sec (half dry): 33 to 50 grams.
Doux (Sweet): more than 50 grams.
Note that it is technically possible for an extra-dry Champagne to have less sugar than a brut, but this is generally not the case.
- CHRIS SHERMAN, Times food critic
Tasting notes
Though most Champagnes and other sparkling wines made with a brut dosage are tartly dry, those made with more sugar have a richer, sweeter taste. Instead of the green apples and citrus flavors of drier wines, you can pick up hints of peaches, apricots and nectarines.
After two weeks of tasting a variety of sweeter sparkling wines, I can say they do well as food wines with a wide range of dishes, from seafood and sauteed chicken to roast beef and collard greens. Tomato dishes are a less happy match.
Prices are for standard 750ml bottles, except where noted, and are approximate.
BAREFOOT BUBBLY EXTRA DRY, $8: Despite the winery's backwoods name, this big production sparkler is cleanly made, with decent fizz and sweet tastes of ripe apple, pineapple and lime. No-pretense fun.
CHANDON RICHE EXTRA DRY, $16: Good pop and mousse followed by strong bubbles in rosy copper. Round, easy texture with a fruit basket of gold and red flavors balanced by a bit of acidity. Touch of muscat in the nose gives a floral, apricot aroma. A burst of California color.
CHATEAU STE. MICHELLE EXTRA DRY, $9.50: It pops but delivers thin mousse and few bubbles. Sweet and creamy to the taste with faint toastiness in the nose. Ultimately a sweet nothing; you can do better (so can Ste. Michelle, and does).
FREIXENET CORDON NEGRO, EXTRA DRY, 9: Spanish black bottle has a good pop, fading fizz and a golden color. Toasty nose and honeyed taste but not overly sweet; full bodied with a modest finish. Good value and tolerable for brut fans.
LUNA DI LUNA SPARKLING CHARDONNAY-PINOT GRIGIO, EXTRA DRY, $9: Overlook the blue-bottle silliness. This pale yellow bulk-method sparkler is crisp and fizzy. Has a yeasty nose, green apple taste and a mild finish. Not as sweet as you fear.
MOET & CHANDON NECTAR IMPERIAL, DEMI SEC, $35: Full, rich texture, old-gold color with tastes of honey, pears and peaches, modest but steady effervescence. Great with food, grand after dinner. First-class sweetheart.
MUMM CARTE CLASSIQUE EXTRA DRY, 375ML SPLIT, $15: Sweet and plump, creamy to drink. Toasty and peachy in the nose and mouth with a bit of backbone and a mild finish. A Chevalier of bubbles, a smoothie with a French accent.
POMMERY POP, EXTRA DRY, 187ML SPLIT, $9: Blue bottle but light straw color with minimal pop and short-lived bubbles. Sweet like melons or pears with citrus and a surprisingly long finish. Portability, packaging are best assets. You could drink from the bottle; please don't.
