Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published December 31, 2007 A Few Words About Champagne Champagne is on my mind, and probably yours. We must have it on New Year's Eve, and again on New Year's Day. Among the many wonderful things about Champagne are these: 1) No other wine is so fine a match with so many foods. The only less-than-great food companion to Champagne I can think of is chocolate--and more than a few people like that, too. Champagne is perfect even with spicy cuisines, making it the wine of choice for Indian, Thai, Chinese, and even Mexican food. And New Orleans food, which is harder to match up with wine than most people realize. 2) The pulling of the cork and the pouring of the foamy bubbly into those tall, thin, elegant glasses may be the ultimate expression of celebration. 3) It's one of the few aspects of a woman's taste that you can count on--the others being flowers and jewelry. To quote Bette Davis in the movie Old Acquaintances: "There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that will help is a glass of Champagne." Even my wife, who only likes wine a little bit, has found her taste for Champagne increasing in recent times. (She volunteered the opinion last week that she finds Mumm's Cordon Rouge very much to her liking.) Even the way Champagne is made separates it from the crowd. An ordinary wine (very ordinary, at that) is made from crushed grapes in the usual way, the yeast turning the sugars in grape juice into alcohol. The grape varieties are mostly red--Pinot Noir and the related Pinot Meunier. Because the grape skins don't ferment with the juice, the red color doesn't come through, and the wine remains white. Chardonnay, a white grape, is also used, but in most Champagnes a minority of the blend. (Although there are some all-Chardonnay Champagnes, designated "blanc de blancs." After the wine is made, it's bottled--and that's when Champagne heads off on a different path. A second batch of yeast is added. That works on other elements in the wine to ferment a second time. This second fermentation creates the bubbles. It also lowers the acidity of the wine, an effect enhanced by the carbon dioxide bubbles to create a creamy sensation. The yeast--which in the best Champagnes is in there for many years--imparts another layer of flavor. It comes across as a toasty sort of accent. This step required the invention of many new methods. Getting the yeast out of the bottle was a problem. Early Champagnes were cloudy. The Veuve ("widow") Clicquot came up with the idea of slowly (over a period of months) tilting and turning the bottles so the yeast moved into the neck, from which it could easily be removed. (Even easier when the neck could be frozen, so the yeasts came out in a compact plug of solid wine.) Developing bottles that could hold the gas pressure from the bubbles without blowing up was also a challenge. As was developing a cork that would stay in place. (The wire cage helped do the job.) With all that, the Champagne bottle is the most expensive of all standard wine containers. All of this gives Champagne a claim to its reputation as a luxury product. But there are a few facts the Champagne producers would prefer you didn't know. So let's have some fun at their expense (they can afford it.) First of all, the process that puts the bubbles in Champagne was adopted soon after its discovery because before that time the area was producing some pretty poor wine. The area is so far north that the grapes didn't always ripen. That made for very acidic, light wine. Sugar sometimes had to be added to it so it could make enough alcohol to be acceptable as wine. The sugar addition helped the bubble-making second fermentation. That was one extraordinary measure that had to be taken to make pre-bubble Champagne acceptable. Another was the blending of one vintage into another, to even out the flaws. This persists to this day, under the guise of "creating a consistent house style." Nowhere else in the high-end wine world are vintages blended. Champagne has created the myth that its product is rare. In fact, over a third of the flood of wine from France is bubbly. A rare wine is one made in lots of 5,000 or so cases. Over a million bottles are made of each vintage of Dom Perignon--one of the most vaunted and "rarest" of Champagnes. The only thing rare about Champagne is that the Champagne region of France is completely planted to vines. This is why they're buying new wineries in California, Chile, and Australia. To point up how false the supposed rarity of Champagne is, consider the perceived turn of the millennium. Six months before December 31, 1999, people were stocking up on Champagne because of a rumor that it would run out. It turned out that there was Champagne aplenty for anyone who wanted it. It may have been a ruse on the part of people who sell Champagne to turn a lot of inventory into cash. Despite that, only a soulless creep could hate Champagne. Mary Ann and I will welcome this New Year with a bottle of Moet & Chandon White Star. It will be marvelous. Even so, that wouldn't make my top-ten list of best Champagnes (none of which I have in the house at the moment). I have that list under Pursuit of Excellence. Of course, there are many sparkling wines from other parts of the world than the Champagne region of France. I like them and drink them often. But on New Year's Eve, it seems to me the cork should pop from the original, genuine article. A very good one can be had for $35-$40. So it's a full-fledged Champagne for us. Ten Best Champagnes Here's a list of the best Champagnes that are easily available around New Orleans. They're mostly the wines called "tete de cuvee"--the best blends of the house that makes them. Most are vintage Champagnes, itself a mark of quality. (Vintage Champagnes are not made in less than excellent years.) The current vintage is typically 1996. All of these Champagnes sell for over $100 a bottle. Some approach $200. Are they worth it? Yes, as markers of special occasions. (My favorite of those being, "The night we opened the Krug." The list is biased by my taste for bigger-bodied Champagnes. Most of these are made with a predominance of red grapes, and are aged on the yeasts for extended periods of time. 1. Veuve Clicquot "Grande Dame." 2. Krug Grande Cuvee. 3. Laurent-Perrier "Grand Siecle." 4. Bollinger RD (Recently Disgorged). 5. Pol Roger "Cuvee Winston Churchill." 6. Taittinger "Comtes de Champagne." 7. Duval-Leroy "Femme." 8. Perrier-Jouet "Fleur des Champagnes." 9. Moet et Chandon Brut Imperial Rose 10. Louis Roederer "Cristal." Intentionally left off this list: Salon Dom Perignon © 2007 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com