Fancy words to bamboozle your friends with over the holiday break
Sparkling wine is the favourite province of wine wankers, and that’s one reason why sparkling wines makers outside the Champagne region of France have adopted all those fancy Champagne terms. We give you the plain English versions here, so you’ll never have to be afraid of mixing it with smart-arses at fancy receptions.
Autolysis describes the breakdown of yeast cells in the bottle once the second fermentation is completed. These lees slowly decay and release the amino-acids, enzymes and other nutrients which add notes of yeast, fresh bread and biscuits to the score of a good bubbly.
Bague Couronne. This is a great chance to show off, as most people have never heard of this term which describes the rounded lip on the top of a champagne bottle, the one that secures the crown seal during the second fermentation. The crown seal is later replaced with a fancy cork.
Blanc de Blancs describes a champagne made from white grapes, usually chardonnay.
Blanc de Noirs is a champagne made from red grapes, usually Pinot Noir and/or Pinot Meunier. Grape juice is always ‘blanc’; the colour of red wines comes from contact with grape skins.
Brut simply means dry, as opposed to demi-sec which is a bit sweet or only half dry (sec means dry too). If no sugar is added, the wine will be labelled Brut Nature.
Cépage or assemblage is the mix of grape varieties used in winemaking, another chance to show that you know your stuff especially since both words are easy to pronounce. In champagne these are Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, with smaller contributions by Pinot Meunier and Pinot Gris.
Cork. If you want to make deep impression on your friends, show them how a champagne corks is made up of separate sections. The main body is called the manche and is made of agglomerated cork; the miroir at the bottom is made of 2 or 3 discs of natural cork. Champagne corks are larger than regular corks and compressed when inserted into the bottle to ensure a tight seal.
Crémant – literally more ‘creamy’. This is a style of bubbly made at lower pressure in other parts of France.
Cuvée is the French word for big vat and in champagne refers to a blend. Most champagne is blended from different parcels of wine and different years to produce a consistent ‘house style’.
Prestige Cuvée is the name for the most expensive champagne in a house’s range, usually offered in extra fancy bottles. Examples include Louis Roederer’s Cristal, Pol Roger’s Sir Winston Churchill and Taittinger’s Comtes de Champagne, and of course Dom Pérignon.
Dégorgement / disgorgement. The most exciting part of champagne making: the removal of the yeast sediment (the lees) that forms after the second fermentation in the bottle. You’ve seen pictures of men rotating bottles sitting in riddling racks with their heads down, to work that sediment into the neck.
When the riddling or remuage is done, the bottle necks are plunged into a freezing liquid which traps the sediment (lees) in an ice cube that is then ejected by the pressure in the bottle when the crown seal is removed.
Dom Pérignon was a monk at the Abbey of Hautvillers. Contrary to legend, he didn’t invent sparkling wine – British physician Christopher Merret is now credited with its invention. Dom Pérignon introduced the practice of blending, along with corks and stronger glass bottles to stop the frequent explosions. Dom Pérignon champagne was first marketed by Moët & Chandon in 1935.
Dosage. All the sugar in the Champagne is turned into alcohol during the fermentation, and a small amount of liquid sugar – liqueur de tirage – is usually added at the very end of the process to soften the wine. Most white wine has a few grams per litre of sugar, which you can’t taste.
Jeroboam is the name for a double magnum of champagne. There are many bigger bottles as you can see from the chart below. They’re marketing gimmicks – single bottles or magnums are best.
Lees Aging. Quality sparkling wines are sometimes aged on lees for years, which gives the wines more complexity. Occasionally these wines are not disgorged until they’re offered for sale, and are labelled RD for Recently Disgorged or récemment dégorgé.
Méthode Champenoise is the old name for champagne making used in other countries, banned by the European Union in 1985 as a concession to protecting the Champagne appellation.
Mousse is the head on a sparkling wine. The mousse and the bead can tell you a lot about the wine in the glass: a good champagne has a vigorous mousse that lingers and a fine bead that ‘persists’. Cheap fizz produces courser bubbles and bead, and neither last long.
Muselet is the name of the wire cage that holds the cork secure. To open a bottle, remove the top section of the foil around the cork, then pull out the noose on the wire cage and turn it counter clockwise about half a dozen times. Now clutch the neck of the bottle and the cork with your thumb on the top as you rotate the bottle gentle with your other hand. Holding it at 45 degrees.
Rosé Champagne is a pink version made by the blending of a little red wine with normally made white wine. Taché describes a paler version of the same thing.
Saignée means ‘bleeding’. It’s another chance to show off: this is a process of making rosé champagne in which colour is derived from skin contact rather than by blending some red wine.
Second Fermentation. A small amount of sugar and yeast – liqueur d’expédition – is added before the bottle is sealed, which causes another fermentation inside the bottle. The CO2 gas formed by the fermentation cannot escape and dissolves into the wine, creating champagne’s bubbles.
Cheap sparkling wine is made using the Tank Method, or Charmat Method after its inventor, a less expensive way of making sparkling wine where the second fermentation takes place in a pressurized tank rather than in a bottle. The wine is filtered under pressure and bottled.
Transfer Method: After the second fermentation in the bottle and a short period of sur lie aging (but before riddling), the wine is transferred—with sediment—to a pressurized tank, filtered under pressure and bottled.
Vintage and Non-Vintage (NV). Most champagnes are blends of different vintages to make up a consistent house style. Single vintage champagnes are usually special bottlings from good years sold at a higher price.
A great rundown on how champagne is made
Have Fun
Kim