Bubbles are Booming this Holiday Season
Dec. 1, 2016
Thanksgiving has kicked off the holiday season and we’re well on our way toward more merry making and revelry. With so many celebratory occasions, the holidays lend themselves perfectly to raising a glass of bubbly.
According to Nielsen, sparkling wine is up +11.9% in dollars and +9.3% in cases for the 52 weeks ending 9/10/16. Italian and Spanish sparkling wines together represent 72% of the sparkling business and they are up a combined 28.4% for the 52 weeks ending 11/5/16.
As we move into December, make sure you’re well-stocked and in the know about all that sparkling wine has to offer.
We sat down with two of our fine wine specialists, Jennifer Tietz and Matthew Schneider, to gain insight on sparkling wine – from what makes it fizz, to currents trends and recommendations on how to enjoy the effervescent elixir.
Breakthru: Why do you think bubbles are festive during this time of year?
Jennifer Tietz: I think it’s easy to enjoy; you don’t need food. I also think there is something about the effervescence that excites people. It’s funny, I was just listening to a podcast about the history of soda. Today you just go to the store and you get a can of soda, or a mineral water, and it’s a given. But mineral water used to come from a naturally sparkling mineral spring, and chemists were hard at work just a century ago figuring out how to get bubbles into water. It was this crazy long process for them to figure it out. Then the soda fountain became a thing and people would flock to the soda fountain because they loved the feeling of the effervescence. It’s a really crazy history, but bubbles seem like a rarity or a treat.
Matthew Schneider: You have to look at how many people drink regularly [versus] how many people drink during the holidays; it tends to be an uptake with friends or family. You’re in much more social situations much more often. Inherently the market that goes along with that will also grow. I think that drinking bubbles comes to mind during the holidays because it’s a symbol of celebration and it always has been – [going back to] the Champagne ads in the 1920s and 1930s that are all about celebrating.
Breakthru: What makes a sparkling wine “sparkling”?
JT: That basically refers to when the secondary fermentation takes place in an enclosed vessel. When you look at alcoholic fermentation, it has CO2 as a byproduct. The difference is when you’re making a still wine, it might be in an open tank; it will have some kind of pressure release so that the CO2 escapes the liquid and it doesn’t end up being integrated. One of the key factors of making sparkling wine is that it’s pressurized and contained.
Breakthru: What are some of the different methods for making sparkling wine?
JT: There are a number of methods to make sparkling wine, one being the Champagne method. You can’t legally use the word “Champagne” anywhere outside of the Champagne region due to an EU law. You can call it “traditional method,” or “méthode traditionelle,” depending on where you are.
In the Champagne method, or traditional method, the fermentation process is happening in the bottle. That’s when you add what’s called the “liqueur d'expédition” – it’s the yeast, wine and sugar mixture that you put back in to start the second fermentation. The CO2 that is then being produced is trapped in the bottle and dissolves into the wine, making it sparkling. The fact that this takes place in the bottle is important in that it enhances, or increases, the lees contact. Lees are the dead yeast cells. When you drink Champagne and you get that bready, nutty, toasty, creamy flavor and mouthfeel – that’s coming from the lees.
The percentage of contact the wine in the bottle has with the lees is going to be much higher in the Champagne method than the charmat method, where the second fermentation takes place in a big tank. So the charmat method tends to produce more fresh fruit-driven styles. It’s also a little bit cheaper since you can rack the wine off the lees all at once, as opposed to the Champagne method where you have to individually disgorge the bottles to get the yeast out of there. The charmat method is better for aromatic varietals, for when you’re looking for that fresher style like Prosecco or Moscato. There are a few other methods, but for our purposes I think those are the two main ones.
Breakthru: What are the variations of sweetness in sparkling wines?
JT: When we talk about the word dosage that refers to the amount of sugar winemakers are adding back into the wine during the traditional method. This takes place after they disgorge the lees, and i’s what determines the final sweetness of the sparkling wine. It can be anywhere from bone, bone dry like a brut nature Champagne with zero dosage, or zero grams per liter sugar, all the way to Moscato, which can be 100-120 grams per liter residual sugar.
Breakthru: What are the main grapes used?
MS: Sparkling wine all depends on where it’s made. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir always come to mind, and those are really the most well-known varietals. They are what you make Champagne out of, and Pinot Meunier as well. Then if you go to something like Prosecco, they’re using the Glera grape.
Breakthru: Consumers often purchase Champagne, Cava and Prosecco – what are some other popular sparkling wines?
JT: Franche cordée is huge. This is a traditional method, and they are in my opinion very much rivaling the quality of Champagne. A lot of their quality standards are higher because they’re trying to brand themselves as the premier sparkling wine region in the world. It’s a smaller production, and the aging requirements are longer. They’re using many of the same grapes: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and then Pinot Bianco instead of Pinot Meunier. They’re very good wines – rich, toasty. Moscato is also big right now.
Breakthru: We see bubbles often as a cocktail ingredient on drink menus, why is that?
JT: I think it’s for many of the same reasons that people like drinking the bubbly beverages themselves. They also help to really cleanse the palate, which a lot of times when you think of the progression of a meal, people often have a cocktail or two. Then you have wine with dinner and then maybe some coffee or after dinner drinks. So I think people like to add that freshness and palate-cleansing quality to something meant to be enjoyed before the meal. The bubbles also helps awaken the palate a little bit as well.
Breakthru: Are there any trends that you’ve seen in the bubbles world recently?
JT: For a while people were really into the weirder stuff like ancestral method, or anything that was maybe a little bit different. I think now people are heading back towards the classics, going back towards well-balanced Champagnes. Consumers are going back to what we’ve always expected, like classic examples of Champagne that are very well made, or classic examples of Prosecco that are very fresh and clean.
MS: The only trend is that it keeps growing. Bubbles are on fire. I think it’s hard for them not to be. They’re a celebratory drink, but they’re also something that you can have anytime – whether it’s a mimosa at brunch, a digestif after dinner, an appretif before dinner, or champagne during dinner. There are so many different facets to bubbles that I don’t think they have anywhere to go but up.
Breakthru: What’s the future of bubbles look like?
MS: More and more unique regions in the world are starting to throw their hat in the ring. We’re finding out a little bit more about bubbles and what they can do in different parts of the world, which is always neat. In Great Britain they’re making some great sparkling wine that has never really been exported. I think that’s going to be the new hot sparkling region in the next 10 years. It still has time, but houses like Taittinger are investing there, so you know that something’s going on. South America, also has a good deal of bubbles. Even in the U.S., we’re starting to produce some really high-quality bubbles in a lot of our California states, but also in regions like Michigan, which is actually making some really unique sparkling wine right now.
Méthode Champenoise: The labor-intensive process whereby wine undergoes a secondary fermentation inside the bottle, creating bubbles. The secondary fermentation begins with the addition of a liqueur de tirage to a bottle of still base wine, which then produces carbon dioxide and spent yeast cells, or lees. The lees are collected in the neck of the bottle during the riddling process and are then disgorged from the bottle. Lastly, the dosage, or solution of wine and sugar, is added back into the bottle. Depending on the grams of sugar in the dosage, the sweetness of the sparkling wine will vary.
Charmat method: A less expensive method for producing large quantities of sparkling wine. The second fermentation takes place inside of a pressurized tank, rather than in a bottle, decreasing lees contact and producing larger, coarser bubbles.
Fermentation: Also called primary fermentation, this is the process in which yeasts metabolize grape sugars and produce alcohol, carbon dioxide and heat. The final product is wine.
Lees: Sediment – dead yeast cells, grapeseeds, stems, pulp and – remaining in a barrel or tank during and after fermentation.
Liqueur d'expedition: In bottle-fermented sparkling wines, a small amount of wine (usually mixed with sugar) that is added back to the bottle once the yeast sediment that collects in the neck of the bottle is disgorged. Also known as dosage.
Liqueur de Tirage: A solution of wine, sugar and yeast added to a bottle of still base wine to begin the traditional method of making Champagne, or méthode traditionnelle. The addition of the liqueur de tirage triggers the secondary fermentation which gives sparkling wine its bubbles.
Secondary fermentation: The process that creates the bubbles in sparkling wine. As the wine is bottled, a small amount of yeast and sugar is added before the bottle is sealed with a sturdy crown cap. The yeasts quickly start fermenting the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide. Since the gas cannot escape, it dissolves into the wine.
Traditional method: All Champagne and most high-quality sparkling wine is made by this process, also known as méthode Champenoise. However due to an EU law, only sparkling wine prodcuced in the Champagne region may be legally called Champagne. Sparkling wines produced by the same method, but outside of the Champagne, label their processes either méthode classique or metodo classic, depending on the region in which they were produced.
Definitions adapted from Wine Spectator.
Now that you’re in the know, make sure you’re capitalizing on the holiday season by stocking up on fizzy favorites. Talk to your sales consultant today about Breakthru’s bubbles portfolio.
Sources:
http://www.winespectator.com/learnwine