"OH, I CAN'T. It goes right to my head!" And with this phrase, a thousand eager hands (attached to lusting hearts) reach forth, offering yet another glass of sparkling wine to their dates.
But is it true? Does sparkling wine really accelerate the careening path towards tipsiness and the easy abandonment of virtue? Yes, sort of. (I'll wait for a moment, while you all head out to the wine shop. Okay, let's continue.) The carbon dioxide helps blood absorb alcohol more quickly, or something; it's all too biochemical for me. The funny thing is, despite the many attempts our species has made towards concocting a seduction aid, this one - which actually appears to have some sort of effect - is an accident. Apparently, nature wants to encourage such behavior. And why argue with nature?
So what's that about an accident? Well, it's like this: you know how wine comes from yeasts fermenting grape sugars and turning them into alcohol? (Sorry. It's that nefarious biochemistry again. Just bear with me for a moment.) Anyway, one of the other by-products of this process is carbon dioxide. In a non-sparkling wine, this gas is set free before bottling. Even if it's not, there's no lasting effect; the bottle gets opened, there's a minor and momentary "prickle" of fizz, but eventually the wine ends up bubble-free. You'll see this a lot in light, crisp wines like German riesling or Vinho Verde from Portugal.
But back up a step. If there's leftover sugar, and there's even a single cell of living yeast, eventually there's going to be fermentation. And if this fermentation happens in an airtight container - say, a wine bottle - there's going to be carbon dioxide with nowhere to go. Wine folk call this "spontaneous refermentation" (wine folk are armed with the sexiest terms, aren't they?), and it's considered a grievous flaw, because it's usually accompanied by horrible aromas of rotting feet. Try that on a date and see how it works out for you.
At some point in winemaking's long history, this drew notice. We're not entirely sure where or when, but we do know that it didn't first happen in Champagne, and we also know that the monk Dom Pérignon had nothing to do with it (despite much mythmaking to the contrary). Eventually, winemakers were intrigued enough to try to figure it out. Because the thing was, the wines didn't always smell like fermented feet. Sometimes, they were quite nice.
Through much trial (and undoubtedly much error), someone figured it out. Whoever it was, thanks to centuries of aggressive marketing, the method is now associated with the international home of high-quality fizz, and so we call it the méthode Champenoise (Champagne method) or méthode traditionelle (traditional method), which these days has been refined to an efficient combination of art and science. Basically, it works like this: a still (non-sparkling) wine is made and bottled. Sugar and yeast are added to the finished wine, the bottle is sealed - usually with a crown cap, like on bottles of soda - and turned so that its top is angled downward, and the yeast and sugar are left alone together ... with or without romantic music. Dead yeast cells, having given their all, collect in the neck of the bottle - right up against the crown cap.
When they're all dead, the neck is flash-frozen and the cap, along with its attached "plug" of dead soldiers, is removed from the bottle, which is quickly recorded (with the same cork that you'd find in any bottle of wine, albeit slightly fatter). Pressure eventually forces the cork outward, which is why sparkling wines tend to have a little excursion into cork bondage in the form of a wire restraint. But the key point is that méthode Champenoise bubblies are the only wines that are "made" in the very bottle from which you drink them. Kinda neat, huh?
While this is how the majority of the world's best sparkling wines are created, it's not the only way. The second fermentation can be done in a tank, which is how Prosecco is made. It can be allowed to happen spontaneously under very careful conditions, and it's mostly limited to a few unusual French sparklers (like Bugey-Cerdon). And yes, wine can be carbonated like soda, though the producers that do this aren't exactly known for quality. A good way to spot this latter group is the appearance of the word "Champagne" on a wine not from the French region of the same name. Every country but the United States has agreed to forbid this, and only the worst US producers mimic the term.
And so, one of the most elegant and refined styles of wine in the world is an accident, subsequently perfected in order to avoid wines that taste like bubbly toe cheese. Somehow, I don't think we'll see that in Moët & Chandon's marketing campaigns. @
Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@stuffatnight.com.
