Monday, December 31 2007

Taste the Stars

Tiny bubbles, in the wine . . .

There is nothing more refined and delightful than Champagne. It marks our celebrations, our turning points and our passing years, and there's no other way to cheer in a fresh, new year. It's the 31st today and I've got to drop in and pick up a few last-minute things for tonight: lobsters, caviar and a bit of buttermilk for the blini. Nom!

But as Graham Greene once said, "Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully." So one must be very careful in dispensing champagne, lest you find out more than you want to know.

Winexpert's Millenium Sparkling Wine is a favorite kit of mine. It's broadly in the Sekt style of German sparkling wines (Germans make enormous amounts of bubbly--more than the French even--but they drink most of it themselves, clever damen unt herren!) and if you choose to forgo method traditionelle of degorging and remuage and whatnot, it's actually dead-simple to make your own sparkler.

Why 'Sparkling Wine' and not 'Champagne'? Lawsuits, of course. The French won't let anyone else use the word Champagne, claiming quite stridently that only the traditional region around Reims in France can possibly produce the real thing, and any other area trying to do so, even in France, is a bunch of horrid impostors whose only intent is to defraud the public.

Well, that is, until the French government wants to do it themselves.

The French national appellations body will look to add 40 new communes to the already vast Champagne region in order to cater for increased demand.

Twenty-two villages in the Marne department, 15 in the Aube, two in the Haute-Marne and one commune in the l'Aisne have been put forward as having suitable typicity of terroir to grow grapes to make Champagne.

This is pretty much a blatant grab at more production. Even though they relaxed the production laws to allow for higher harvest levels (and thus lower quality), production is approaching capacity and demand is still increasing. The only way to keep the cash flowing is to allow the entry of previously unsuitable lands into the approved communes of Champagne.

The hypocrisy, it burns! If any other region in the world claimed that it had good enough terroir to be included into classified Champagne production, the French would stroke out right into their foie gras. But because the INAO deems it acceptable, they're going to get away with watering down their own name and quality levels--after all, it isn't going to be Bollinger or Perrier-Jouet coming from these regions, it's going to be generic sham-pagne.

Thankfully, I can make my own at home, without fighting French lawyers. And I'll drink to that.

Posted by Tim AT 6:56AM

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