Dive into the effervescent world beyond Champagne with an educational journey into France’s lesser-known, but equally enchanting, sparkling wines. Whether you’re a wine enthusiast keen to broaden your knowledge or pursuing a diploma in wine studies, this video is crafted for you. 🍾✨
In this episode, we delve into:
The intricacies of France’s sparkling wines that stand proudly outside the Champagne region. We’re talking a lot about Crémant here – from Blanquet to others, each bubbling with uniqueness.
A focused discussion tailored for the WSET Level 4 Diploma, covering terminology, history, and classifications crucial for understanding these bubbly treasures.
Detailed insights into the production, styles, and regions of Crémant across France, with a spotlight on Crémant de Bordeaux, Crémant de Die, and other regional sparklers that weave a rich tapestry of flavors and styles.
A cartographic journey mapping the eight Crémant appellations in France, highlighting the three largest and most important regions.
A taste exploration of different Crémant styles, from the nutty and elegant edges of Crémant de Bordeaux to the grapy character of unique blends.
The evolution and importance of Crémant in the French wine landscape, balancing between domestic consumption and international acclaim.
We value your engagement:
Have experiences or questions about these intriguing sparklers? Your thoughts and stories are welcomed here. Share your favorite Crémant, or spark a debate on how they compare to the famed Champagne.
Interested in further wine education? Stay tuned for series three, four, and five, where we’ll dive deeper into the major sparkling wines of France, including those from Alsace, Burgundy, and the Loire Valley.
Join me in exploring the sparkling jewels of France’s vineyards. Whether you’re studying wine or simply love its sparkle, this guide is filled with insights to elevate your appreciation and knowledge. Don’t forget to comment below with your sparkling wine experiences or questions. Cheers to expanding your wine horizons! 🥂🇫🇷
Useful hashtags:
#WineEducation #SparklingWines #Crémant #FrenchWines #WSET #WineLovers #WineJourney #BeyondChampagne #WineTasting #WineDiscovery
This is all about wine education if you need to know more about a topic in wine whatever it may be you’ll find it here and if you are studying the world of wine you’ll find this exceptionally useful because it follows key text and key syllabus of major wine
Qualifications this video is going to be looking at sparkling wines for the diploma wct level 4 focusing on the other sparkling wines of France so if you have any comments or questions we would love to hear from you please do get in touch about your experiences with sparkling wines other than
Champagne so we will be talking about a lot of cremont in this one blon deu and and so on uh series three four and five will go into the major other sparkling wines that’s cronas crond de and La Valley but on this series which is just
A one video we’re looking at the others outside of that list of course so let’s look at the other sparkling wines of France let’s talk about some terminology to begin with and that ISO so this terminology is is used to denote some Regional French traditional method sparkling wines which are made
Outside of the famous Champagne region so other parts of France making the same style in methodology now before 1985 the termo was used to refer to a semi sparkling style Within champagne and please be careful with the spelling there is a a village a c Village in
Champagne called crom so there’s an a instead of where the E is in Kon so it can get a little bit confusing now the European Union banned the term method champenois as a description of the traditional method for sparkling wines so when this ban came in the terminology came to be used
Exclusively for traditional method sparkling wines outside of the Champagne region now in the following decades after that more regions created a CL and production grew so I will be talking throughout this presentation about when certain regions designated a classification for KL in their specific location here are your uh well here’s a
Bit of um cartography a bit of map action for you uh outlining the eight clemont appalachi in France so you’ll see them listed on your map just here so eight of them the three largest and most important are alas B and LA soas and there are your three largest and
Most important but please remember that places like the lair also have separate appellations for sparkling like AO c v and a o samur as well so they have separate appellations not classified as cron making similar Styles but a different separate classification so they lie outside of this figure of eight
Stated on your slide now the three major regions alsas uh burgundy and then also your lair will be covered in future videos future series but the other ones de bordo crur CR Liu and CR SAA will all be discussed in this presentation so the remaining uh ones now according to what
We’ve just talked about Dave should be less important okay yes in size but importance is an interesting word to use there are some fabulous wines made from of course these these other regions uh and let’s talk about our first one which is cremont de Bordeaux so cremont de
Bordeaux is a relative ly new cremont classification which actually dates back to 1990 production is very small it’s about 67,000 hect uh and four out of every five bottles is domestically sold and I’ve highlighted Bordeaux down here covers the same area so this is really something which is quite domestic and
Often stays very much around areas like the Southwest including Bordeaux of course now what do you expect as the style so the most important white varieties for cremont bordo are s Blanc SE muscadel and also song for the red varieties it’s what you would expect Merlo cabon and
Cabet now because of this rad a wide range of great varieties it’s quite hard to pinpoint a a typical Taste of a cremont de Bordeaux uh and and that is really because it’s grape and age dependent um but I’ll go through some of them if if you do have higher
Proportions of semon the wines tend to have a little bit more of a Savory nutty and elegant Edge to them sovon Blanc typically bring floral and grasslike aromatics and Mero adds more of the kind of rasbury and red current character now white clono can be made
Using red varieties as long as no skin contact occurs whereas pink crond bordo must have a proportion of red grapes of course to give the delicate pink color color next up we go to the ran and that is for crond a since 1993 so just a little bit after Bordeaux
And it comes from the vineyard plots along the D Valley that you see on your map it lies within the same area as CL so we have two Styles here and then CL so you have the two starles we’ll go through both of those of course
Uh so this area the Drome River Valley is uh not far from valence of course which is sort of Southern section of norn ran Valley so what do we expect in a crond now initially we would find the bulk of cremont being made from your middle grape on your slide and that is
Clet um and that traditionally was uh certainly really the principal grape uh but we can have alot in the blend between 10 and 40% and then muskat between five and 10% uh and that’s going to give um more green elements and floral edges to the style but there is less than 2,000
Hector of this produced so much smaller than uh the clemon from Bordeaux and about nine out of 10 bottles are domestically consumed within France so this is a very rare exported expression of a traditional method sparkling wine then we have the clet which is a bit more prevalent so it
Is a style which is quite famous around this area and the best Expressions will be labeled as now Muscat must make up a minimum of 75% of the blend and then Claret will make up the remainer so this is really the opposite of the uh which is mainly CL topped up with
Potentially some muskat and a little bit of alot so this is Gap dominant so of course the wines are going to be quite grapy so they have a grapy character and their alcoholic strength is only at around 7 to 8% ABV and it’s used by the method and this production method
Actually involves a primary fermentation up to about 3% ABV in a tank and then it goes into bottle to have a second fermentation unusually the inherent grape sugar rather than the added sugar and yeast is what gives it the second fermentation so nothing is uh is added it is a
Culmination of the sugar that is in there initially so it’s that inherent grape sugar rather than anything added no dosage is also permitted on this style as well so these are wines that are going to have um a distinct amount of grapy sweetness as well uh and are are quite friendly expressions of
Sparkling wines then we go to the crond deur uh which was elevated to an AOC at the end of 1995 uh around 35,000 Hector are produced uh so this is gaining in importance and is about half the size of what’s produced in Bordeaux today uh and about a third are exported
So actually quite a a typical domestic to export ratio so you will see these wines and of course also in the United Kingdom we get access to kont so we count ourselves lucky of course now this appalation is intrinsically linked to the coat de AR which is the main city of the
Northern section chat Shalon which of course is the old castle now a village looking majestically across towards V and then also the star Village on a a pentac star shaped Hill as well as having those pentagrin star soils fossils in the soils uh so what do we expect in terms of great
Varieties in play now the varieties are Pulsar p truso chardonay and savan that are permitted the five the major five uh for white you have to have a a minimum of 70% of chard pinoir and truso okay a small production of truso uh at only really about 10% of the
Vineyard land but does craft some of the most interesting red so you’re more than likely to find the whites being mostly Chardon and P Noir Blends not so much tuso and then for pink CR you must have over 50% PIR pulsar and truso with a significant amount of panir so panir is
Actually fairly prevalent in j uh it is you know fairly significant in production but most of it does go into actually sparkling as you’ll see from being listed on this slide what I really like about certainly the white K is chardonay often is grown on some sort of
Clay or mal and you will find the wines certainly have a distinct sort of almost nutty very classic sort of J Edge to it and they can be absolutely Exquisite they’re great value for money then we come down to the Liu so this was officially recognized in
1990 it is one of the five AOC classifications in the Limu appalation the others belong to blon De Limu Limu method ancestral and then red and white still Limu so it’s one of the five located in this darker shade here on your map just south of the Fortress medieval Fortress
City of kakas beautiful place on the canal deidi uh quite wonderful so what do you expect in cremont Liu so it’s made up of two major great varieties and that is chardonay and shannan Blanc interestingly uh which together will make up a maximum proportion of 9 % of
The uh of the blend shenan Blanc is a minimum of 20% and a maximum of 40% so between 20 and 40% there are some auxiliary great varieties for cron Liu uh and they are mozac and P Noir both of those are maximum of 20% uh and pinoir is not allowed to
Exceed 10% the anal production here is about 40 4,000 hect so quite similar to J just a little bit larger and just under half of that is exported so probably about 45% which gives you an idea that this is actually quite a successful wine outside of its domestic
Market we then have blon blanquet D Liu is the Region’s most famous wine containing a blend of mozac chardonay and shanon blond but the true speciality is blanquet Method ancestral which is made exclusively from moac so you’ll actually see uh this label here is the top line it’s a
Blanquet Liu made from The Abbey of St H which holds the record for the oldest production of sparkling wine dating back to 1531 that’s the oldest written record of sparkling wine production now the bottom one which is the blon blanquet method ancestral made exclusively from moac is often sweeter often cloudy and
It has less sort of fizzy Sparkles to it it is left to ferment a second time in bottle without subsequent discouragement of the sediment so it’s a cloudy sweeter style I often think it’s a little bit like moss SC oasy from Pon but not as sort of grapy
Floral then we have now all the way across to the Eastern side again we have clont deava this is uh from the French Alps it’s a young Appalachian which actually was only awarded AOC status in 2015 and the production is Tiny because it is a new a new AAC it’s only around 4,000
Healers 60% of the blend must be made from the indigenous great varieties of Ja and Ales otherwise known as ruset and it must have a minimum of 40% jaer for the remaining 40% you’ll find Chala Shard p and game and there’s a maximum of 20% black varieties this is a
Really promising a OC uh certainly where you get a lot of salinity because of the Alpine climate conditions that one can find just one slide to final uh on here is the common features that we find across these cron wines now whole bunch pressing uh is very much important the
Top left there so Hand harvested fruit whole bunches with stems intact so they go through the press to obtain the freshest juice the maximum yield at pressing is 100 L per 150 kg of grapes it’s a minimum of nine months aging on the leaves during the second fermentation on bottle and then a
Minimum 12 months maturation between and release which includes those nine months aging on the leas a maximum ABV of 30 % and a minimum of four atmospheres of pressure of course therefore putting it on the same comparable level of champagne aooc now while alsas and the lair are
The largest the most important sources of traditional method wines outside of champagne the production of each is still only about 10% of the production of champagne so you really do see a dominance from the Champagne region but there is an emerging and very interesting Market with these other
Clemonts please do join me for the other Series where we go into those major expressions ofas and also the LA Valley sparklings if you do have any further comments or questions get in touch by commenting on this video below what’s your favorite what do you like to drink out of these
Cremont do you think they can compete with champagne it will be great to hear from you and if you do find yourself in the beautiful Rolling Hills of green old blighty here in the UK come and say hello for a class glass or bottle I’ve been Jimmy Smith CIA for now goodbye
1 Comment
Bravo Jimmy! Excellent présentation as always. ❤