Lovely bubbly

’Tis the season to drink bubbly – but do you know your Crémant from your Cava? David Harker, owner of Newcastle Wine School, explores the fabulous world of fizz

It’s likely the first sparkling wines were a happy accident – partially fermented wines which were bottled in winter and bubbled into life in the spring. The warmth of spring unexpectedly woke dormant yeasts which converted unfermented sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. From there, trapped in a bottle, the gas either dissolved in the wine or caused quite the explosion. 

Legend has it that, in the spring of 1531, a monk of the Abbey of St Hillaire, near Carcassonne, mastered this process. The unnamed monk created the gently sparkling, slightly sweet and apple-flavoured Blanquette de Limoux. The unfiltered, cloudy and sparkling Pet-Nat is made using the ancestral method today.

Another monk, Dom Pérignon, is credited by Möet Chandon with the creation of the world’s most famous sparkling wine. However, at the time, a fizzy wine was a faulty one. The learned Dom most likely devoted his life’s work to improving Champagne’s still wines, not developing sparkling ones. In fact, it was the English – not the French – who invented sparkling Champagne. 

The process of adding sugar to a finished wine to induce a second fermentation, with the intention of making the wine sparkling, was presented to The Royal Society by Christopher Merrett in 1662 – six years before the Dom took up his position as cellar master at the Abbaye d’Hautvillers in Champagne.

In the mid 17th Century, only the English had glass bottles capable of withstanding the pressure created by a sparkling wine. That toughened glass – verre anglais – was first produced in 1623 by Admiral Sir Robert Mansell in his glassworks on Tyneside.

If the English discovered the process, the Champenoise perfected the craft of creating a sparkling wine by adding sugar and yeast to a bottle of still wine, then leaving it for years to acquire complexity from yeast contact. They also worked out how to remove the dead yeast to leave a clear, bright sparkling wine.

Inspired by a demonstration of the Champagne method at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900, Alsace winemaker Julien Dopff pioneered the first Crémant d’Alsace. Alsace now produces more than 50% of all French Crémant – the name given to French sparkling wines made by the Champagne method, but from outside the Champagne region.

Outside of France, Catalan winemaker Josep Raventós Fatjó was also inspired to create a sparkling wine using the Champagne method. He visited Champagne in 1872 and subsequently devoted his family wine making business to the production of the wine we know today as Cava.

Cava can be an inexpensive alternative to Champagne, but the market-leading source of cheap fizz is Prosecco. Classic Prosecco, produced in the hills around Treviso in north-east Italy, is named after the Prosecco grape variety. Recognising that their exports could be undermined by Prosecco wines made elsewhere, the wily Italians changed the name of the grape to Glera. They then extended the production zone to include the small town of Prosecco, 150km from the traditional growing area and one which had never grown the Glera grape. This sleight of hand enabled the Italians to seek name protection for the newly defined Prosecco region.

The key difference between Prosecco and sparkling wines made by the Champagne method is that a Prosecco’s secondary fermentation takes place in large stainless-steel tanks – rather than in each individual bottle. There is also a much shorter production time, a minimum of only 30 days, which makes the wine much less expensive to produce.

Closer to home, land and labour costs make English sparkling wine pricey – yet the south of England is one of the few places naturally suited to growing grapes for sparkling wine. Just warm enough for the grapes to fully ripen and avoid bitter green flavours, the region is still cool enough for the grapes to retain their acidity. This acid is what sees the wine through its ageing process and balances out any added sugar.

All the English sparkling wine industry needed was a couple with the ambition to make top-quality English fizz in the manner of Champagne. Americans Stuart and Sandy Moss ignored the advice of sceptical experts and planted Chardonnay and Pinot Noir on chalky soils. In 2003, their Nyetimber Classic Cuvée won best sparkling wine in the world. Recognising the potential of English sparkling, leading Champagne house Taittinger has invested in a Kent wine estate and – 350 years after Merrett’s early experiments – Champagne is coming home!

So, which sparkling wine fits best for which occasion? For a party-pleasing, inexpensive wine, pick Prosecco or Pet Nat. For a more complex apéritif to serve with canapés, choose Champagne or English sparkling. If you are after some of the complexity of Champagne but on a beer budget, try a Crémant. For something with character, go for Gran Reserva Cava and serve it with a mature cheese. Alternatively, sip your way through a wide range of sparklers in the pursuit of fizzical education. Cheers!