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Bubbly personality

Champagne's highbrow image is starting to yield as the region's winemakers try to put some fun in their fizz.

By CHRIS SHERMAN
Published July 12, 2006

	[Pommery]
	Pommery Champagne dressed in animal prints.

Fun is serious business in Champagne the place, sometimes too serious.

Sure these chilly vineyards that put sparkling bubbles into chardonnay and pinot noir can fill a bottle with frivolity, party hats and explosive good cheer. The pop and celebratory circumstances attached to Champagne the drink make smiles and kisses.

But traditional Champagne can produce frowns at show-off prices, knotted brows over baffling labels and, no matter what the final choice, pinched cheeks on those who find the taste sour and irritating.

A small wave of rethinking could change that. In the Champagne region of France and especially outside its fiercely protected borders, innovators want a hipper modern image, splashy packaging in smaller bottles and cans, colorful labels and silly names.

And in the smartest cases, such as Pommery's single-serving Pop, there's a friendlier flavor for a younger generation. Make that flavors: Pommery has added a rose with bright strawberry flavors and a color that the label bravely admits is "pink." And the next round of Pop will come in bottles painted with primitive animals. Critter wines do come to Champagne. Quelle horreurs.

Yet, wine maker Thierry Gasco stresses that Pop's achievement was inside the bottle, even though he was trying to make a wine for a younger market. That was in 1999.

"It was an oenological project before it was packaging," he says. Younger customers "want something easier to drink, more casual."

And sippable through a straw.

Despite the many Champagne houses' brands and styles, there are only three grapes, chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier, that go into the wine. Even so, Gasco set out to find the vineyards whose grapes would make fruitier flavors and creamier bubbles. He has a knack for reinvention: In France he has produced grown-up cuvees for each of the four seasons.

New packaging has caught on. Even Veuve Clicquot, a grand and doughty widow of the north, now sells a zip-up neoprene wetsuit in signature orange, to go for a dip in a beachside cooler. Heidsieck Monopole, a name that almost demands a monocle, now comes in a minibottle wearing a foil cap of shiny cobalt, and is known sassily as Little Blue Top.

Elsewhere on Planet Sparkle there is less restraint. A few years ago, Napa's Niebaum-Coppola, captured bubbles in a soda can named Sofia, for the filmmaker's daughter. Something may have been lost in translation but not the fun.

The Italians now deliver more prosecco, gentler than Champagne and a touch sweeter. With runway splash, one winery branded its prosecco IL in a swirl of color as a new "it" drink. The newest hue is from Australia, sparkling shiraz, red and ripe.

Is this heresy? Hardly. For centuries the Champenois have been champs at branding and packaging. Sweetness is nothing new either, it was the fashion until a century ago.

That's when the first brut, the now standard, bone-dry dosage was perfected at, surprise, Pommery. Which allows Gasco to boast "'If Pommery does not innovate, who will?"

The slighter sweeter bubbly, oddly called extra dry, fell into disfavor as did some roses, because many winemakers dumped their poorest grapes in them. No longer, extra dry and sweeter bubblies are in a quiet resurgence. Pop is one and so is Moet & Hennessy's popular White Star which also comes in a handy split.

Oddly, easy-going new sparkle may make one Champagne dream come true for its makers: People drinking it for everyday fun or Friday night kicks. No need to wait for New Year's Eve or a special occasion.

Chris Sherman, who writes about food and wine for the St. Petersburg Times, is the author of "The Buzz on Wine" (Lebhar-Friedman Books, $16.95). He can be reached at (727) 893-8585 or csherman@sptimes.com.

TASTING NOTES

Innovations in winemaking and packaging will make sparkling wines easier to buy and drink. Makers have rewritten, and simplified, the language too.

Size: Forget memorizing arcane terms like magnum and jeroboam.

From the standard 750 ml bottle, sizes now go downward. A half-size split of 375 ml is sold in restaurants and for dinners for two. The smallest, 187 ml, is ideal for single servings and sold in four-packs.

Sweetness: The traditional dry to sweet rankings are brut, extra-dry and demi-sec. Brut remains the industry standard and is on most bottles you see. But there is more extra-dry around; Piper-Heidsieck and Domaine Ste. Michelle proudly label theirs extra-dry. Domaine Chandon Riche, Pommery Pop and White Star are also extra-dry.

Names: Only one region makes Champagne; the rest of France and the world make sparkling wine.

Tastings:

* Moet & Hennessy White Star, Champagne, $10, 187 ml bottle. Mostly chardonnay, with honey, nuts and a bit of citrus. Extra-dry and not for snobs; maybe just right for you.

* Pommery Pop, Champagne, $10, 187 ml bottle. All pinots, creamy mousse (fizz), easy finish. Extra-dry sweetness makes it a bit like strawberry shortcake. Hints of lemon. Also in white and soon in maxi 750 ml bottles.

* Sofia, Blanc des Blancs, NV, California, $4, 187 ml can. Comes with a cool quill straw, which works. Delivers foamy mousse, lively peach flavor. Nice gold, melon aroma in glass. A pinot-based rose is in the pipeline.

- CHRIS SHERMAN

[Last modified July 11, 2006, 14:48:49]