Méthode Champenoise Redux for a Bubbly Valentine’s Day

Champagne, bubbly, sparkling wine, Valentines Day
Lovely sparkling wines made by the méthode champenoise

This is a redux from a post we ran four years ago on méthode champenoise and why you want to look for it on the label of your Valentine’s Day bubbly. And since Valentine’s is (gasp) next week, we thought we’d share it again.

We tasted Breathless Sparkling Wines a couple years ago at the Family Winemakers tasting event and loved them. Turns out there was a good reason why – they’re made by a friend of ours, Penny Gadd-Coster. Penny’s the Executive Director of Winemaking at Rack & Riddle, a winery and custom crush facility in Hopland, California. (A custom crush facility is a place where people with grapes can go to make wine commercially without buying and/or building a whole winery.)

Breathless is owned by Rebecca Faust, co-owner of Rack & Riddle, and her two sisters Sharon Cohn and Cynthia Faust.

So when we wanted to find out how to pick a good bubbly for Valentine’s Day, it only made sense to talk to Penny about Breathless, and other sparklers.

What are the different sparkling wines?

Sparkling wine, of course, is the generic term for wine that has bubbles in it – or intentionally made with bubbles in it. You can sometimes get bubbles in wine that’s not supposed to have them, but that’s a different issue. Champagne is the stuff from the Champagne region of France and you really shouldn’t call wine Champagne unless it’s actually from there. Never mind that darned near everybody does, including us.

champagne, bubbly, Valentine's Day
Penny Coster in the vineyard. She mostly works on Methode Champenoise

Penny explained that there are some differences between Champagne and California sparklers.

“Probably from a California or a Western U.S. standpoint, the difference is fruit,” she said. “You don’t get that out of most French Champagnes, so that makes them a little bit unique. We can ripen the grapes a little bit more and bring out those flavors.”

Like most French wines, Champagne has a little more acid and will often taste a little chalky, unlike sparkling wines from California.

“You compare these to a French Champagne and they’re a lot more fruit forward,” Penny said. “They can have the acidity, but you actually know that there’s chardonnay in there, that there’s pinot noir in there.”

Oh, yeah, French Champagne and most California sparkling wine are made from either chardonnay – called blanc de blanc, or white from white (grapes), or pinot noir – called blanc de noir, or white from black (or red grapes). All grape juice is white, red and pink wines get their color from soaking the juice in the skins before fermenting them.

Look for Méthode champenoise

For that special night out, if you’re not getting an actual Champagne, Penny recommends looking for the words “méthode champenoise” on the label. This means it was made like they make Champagne in Champagne, France. The wine is fermented and bottled, then goes through a second fermentation in the bottle, which produces the bubbles. Other bubblies are made by the charmat process, which means they shot the fermented wine through with carbon dioxide, basically, like they do with sodas.

“The made in the bottle wine is going to be a lot more elegant,” Penny said. “You’re going to have nicer, smaller bubbles. You’re going to feel more elegant.”

She did point out that méthode champenoise tends to be more expensive because it’s a lot more labor intensive. Nor are charmat-style bubblies that bad. They can be perfectly nice. But we are talking special occasion here.

As for what to serve with your bubbly, well, anything your fuzzy little heart desires. That’s the great thing about sparkling wine, it literally goes with just about everything. Penny suggested having a sparkling rosé if you’re serving a heavy meat dinner, such as a standing rib or steak. If you’re doing something a little on the spicy side, then you might want the slightly sweet bubbly labeled “extra dry.” No, it doesn’t make sense, but that’s how it goes sometimes.

In any case, bubbles make it special and that’s what you want for Valentine’s Day – or any other special occasion. Even if it’s just surviving another week.

A New Name for an Old Acquaintance – Michelle

CameraZOOM-20140212161951604It was kind of an interesting invite, although it took Anne several minutes to decipher that it was an event introducing the sparkling wine Michelle. It was being staged for women and took place at a blow dry bar. We weren’t able to attend for a lot of reasons, but we had to admit the staging of it made us a little uncomfortable, as if Michelle, which was the new label from Chateau Ste. Michelle, was being dumbed down to suit the ladies.

It wasn’t – we promise you that and we were quite pleased with the wine, itself. But the event was going after Michelle’s primary market – women. You see, women account for 75 percent of wine sales in the U.S. and most women get their wines from the supermarket shelves, as noted by wine writer Karen MacNeil a couple years ago in a Daily Beast interview. It’s about the daily or table wine – the stuff you drink every night, versus the expensive fancy stuff you buy to collect or for special occasions. That’s the wine that mostly men tend to buy – and what most wine publications cover, which is why it’s mostly written by and for men.

Michelle sparkling wine, on the other hand, is actually the new label for Domaine Ste. Michelle, the sparkling wine put out by Chateau Ste. Michelle in Paterson, Washington. You may have seen their old black label with gold writing and never realized that’s what you were looking at because it blended in with everything else on the supermarket shelf. One thing about the new label is that it definitely pops. In fact, that’s how Anne spotted it so quickly at our local Trader Joe’s for only $8.99 (prices may vary in your part of the country). We found it again at a local BevMo (for $10.99), and we found it easily, even though it was on a lower shelf. Better yet, for the label, we weren’t expecting to find it at TJ’s or even looking for a sparkling wine when we saw it.

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We were sent a couple bottles for review, both the brut and the brut rosé and here’s the really good news – it is one nice sparkler. The taste is smooth, it’s méthode champenoise, with all of the elegance that style creates. It’s just a darned good little wine for a darned good price. And like all sparklers, it goes with everything. The rosé is a little fruitier, but otherwise, it has a lot of the the richness and subtlety that a good Champagne has.

So give it a shot. You don’t even have to be a woman to buy it, but you’ll probably find it at your local supermarket and not a fancy wine shop. Too bad, because it’s just as good as anything from the wine shop.

Flying Goat 2007 Pinot Noir Salisbury Vineyard

Type: Dry red
What makes it special: A pinot noir that’s not from the Santa Rita Hills.
Plays well with: pork, lamb, salmon, cheese.

The 2007 Flying Goat Pinot Wine comes from San Luis Obispo, a little farther up the California coast from where Norman Yost makes his wines in Lompoc.

The nose has a spicebox aroma – think asian five spice powder ingredients such as licorice and cardamon. The color is the same gorgeous ruby red of a certain pair of shoes made in Oz (or more accurately the MGM costume shop).
But just check out the mouth feel and flavor: a medium density filling the mouth with cranberry, strawberry and raspberry without the cloying sweetness those flavors sometimes bring to the party.
The acids present quench the thirst and clear the palate for the next bite of something tasty.  Don’t drink this one alone. Share it with a good meat dish. You could drink it by yourself, but we don’t that would make you too popular.