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With all the holidays upon us, sparkling wine is flying off the store shelves as fast as it can be stocked!  The champagne days are here again!

While most of us bring out the bubbly only during the holidays and other happy occasions (such as birthdays, Bon Voyage parties and job promotions), some even open a bottle during more questionable events (such as engagement announcements and weddings).  

Still others, like my rich employers (and my friend Miss Helen, for that matter) will pop a champagne cork at the drop of a hat -- reunions with old friends, reunions with new friends, a champagne luncheon,  even after successfully walking the dog!  Any time, in their estimate, is the proper time for champagne.  And who am I (me, moi) to judge?

Here are some wonderful quotes on the subject, supplied to us by Miss Helen.

Madame Lily Bollinger:  "I only drink champagne when I'm happy and when I'm sad.  Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone.  When I have company I consider it obligatory.  I trifle with it if I'm not in a hurry, and drink it when I am.  Otherwise, I never touch the stuff, unless I'm thirsty."

Bette Davis:  "There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne."

And Miss Helen's response to Miss Davis:  "I would amend that to say ...a bottle of champagne!"

lol!!!

So what is champagne, anyhow?

The short answer, it's just a wine (or a blend of up to three wines) that requires a continued or secondary fermentation in each individual bottle.

It's the on-going fermentation within the bottle that creates all the bubbles (some 49,000,000 per bottle) which in turn creates the "sparkle" in a champagne glass.  And it's the enormous pressure (90 PSI in the bottle compared to 32 PSI in a car tire), that makes the cork pop out with such force.

The invention required special bottles of course (and the thanks go to British glass makers in the mid 1600's) that can withstand the pressure, and special wired-down corks that wouldn't pop out during the final fermentation process.

The generic name for wines produced in this way is "Sparkling Wine".  The name "champagne" however is legally protected by international treaties (the Treaty of Madrid in 1891, and reaffirmed, after World War I, by the Treaty of Versailles), and should apply only to sparkling wines produced in the Champagne region of France.  

Thus, wines produced anywhere else in the very same way (Cava in Spain and Spumante in Italy, for example) cannot be labeled champagne.  In America, it's usually labeled "Sparkling Wine" by most vineyards.  (But in speech, it's perfectly ok to refer to all these sparkling wines as champagne, even the inexpensive varieties in the supermarket -- we all do that.)  

By the way, many sparkling wines are sweet, due to a small amount of sugar added to increase the fermentation within the bottle.  But in the last century a dryer and more popular version without the extra sugar became available, referred to as "Brut" on the label.  (My preference for sure!  If sweet varieties give you a headache and hangover, you're not alone!  It's all the sugar.)

My rich employers have a huge collection of Dom Perignon champagnes in the wine cellar, going back for decades and stacked by date.  Somewhere in the range of $8,000 to $12,000 per bottle, these champagnes are almost never opened, and I'm assuming it's just an investment on their part, to be auctioned off someday. 

While really great champagnes can range from $2,000 to $20,000 per bottle, for large parties my employers usually stick to more modestly priced Bollingers and Krugs, in the $650-$750 per-bottle range.  (And this penny pinching on their part really gets on my nerves sometimes!)   

While there is a myth that Dom Perignon, a French Benedictine monk in the sixteenth century, invented champagne, it's simply not so.  What he did was tinker with the blends and ultimate taste, making him a master wine maker in the field of sparkling wines.  But the process was discovered / invented long before he arrived on the scene.

Well, this has been way too long! 

But we can't leave each other without listening to "Tiny Bubbles", written by Hawaiian-born Don Ho.  You'll recognize it immediately.  (The beloved crooner Dean Martin took it up as practically a theme song.)  Here's the YouTube link. 



Good night, and Happy Holidays, champagne and all!

Andrew