Did you know that one of my very favorite styles of wine is sparkling wine?!
It’s absolutely delicious and I find the history behind sparkling wine so intriguing….especially since it started as an accident, or more accurately, a HAPPY accident!
Today’s episode is essentially my Sparkling Wine 101 Tasting that you would get if you booked a private tasting with me but you are getting exclusive access to this on the podcast!
I’m sharing how to open a bottle of sparkling wine (if you’ve ever tried to open one then you know there is a science to it!) To go along with my advice on the pod, you can check out my IG and TikTok @corkandfizz for video clips showing how to open a bottle of sparkling wine.
Why was Sparkling Wine once called the devil’s wine? Mostly because of the destruction it caused! Intrigued yet?
I’m also diving into how sparkling wine is made, what makes sparkling wine so special, the different levels of dryness to sweetness in sparkling wine, and finally: the different types of sparkling wine!
Are you ready to learn all about sparkling wine? If so press play and listen in! And after you have listened, head over to my instagram @corkandfizz (https://www.instagram.com/corkandfizz/) and let me know what sparkling wine you are excited to try!
Episode Highlights:
• Tips on how to open a bottle of sparkling wine
• How is sparkling wine made
• How was sparkling wine founded
• Why sparkling wine was initially something to avoid
• Why sparkling wine was called the Devil’s wine
• The traditional method of making sparkling wine
• What is riddling
• What is disgorgement
• What is Dosage’
• The tank or charmant method of making sparkling wine
• The ancestral method of making sparkling wine
• Levels of dryness to sweetness in sparkling wine
• 5 Different types of sparkling wines
• What is the difference between Champagne, Prosecco, and Cava
Listen to French Wine 101 (https://www.corkandfizz.com/wine-blog/guide-to-wine-podcast-episode-19)
I’m so excited to be leading my 2nd wine retreat to Walla Walla WA this April and I want you to come with me!
3 1/2 days, over 8 unique wine tasting experiences, 2 extravagant dinners, special welcome bag full of goodies, new friendships and a lot of laughter and fun awaits you on this can’t miss retreat. Learn more and sign up here www.corkandfizz.com/2024-walla-walla-wine-retreat (http://www.corkandfizz.com/2024-walla-walla-wine-retreat)
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I am so excited to be leading my second ultimate wine Retreat to Walla Walla Washington this April and I want you to come with me it’s 3 and 1 half days over eight unique wine tasting experiences two extravagant luxurious dinners a special welcome bag full of goodies new
Friendships and a whole lot of laughter and fun awaits you on this can’t miss retreat but don’t just take it from me here’s what past guests on this Retreat have to say take the opportunity it is spending but worth it it would be extremely difficult to arrange this kind
Of immersive experience on your own another said I was surprised by the beauty and quality of everything we did I didn’t know much about wala wala and had no idea how stunning the tasting rooms were and finally one said it was so relaxing to just have an expert plan
And curate the entire ire trip I felt like I was a kid on a trip that my parents planned in the best way possible simply put this is the escape you’ve been waiting for tickets for this Retreat are the lowest they’ll ever be at just $2,500 for the entire trip and
That includes four nights at the finch hotel but there are only eight spots left so act fast if you want to learn more and potentially sign up head to my website corken fizz.com and find the tab at the top that says wala wala Retreat I will also have the link in the show
Notes I am so excited to see your application roll In interested in learning about wine but not sure where to start you’re in the right place welcome to the corkin Fizz guide to wine podcast I’m your host Haley Bulman and I’m so glad you’re here I’m a wine enthusiast turned wine educator and founder of the seattle-based wine tasting business
Corkin Fizz it is my goal to build your confidence in wine by making it approachable and lots of fun you can expect to learn everything from how to describe your favorite wine to what to pair with dinner tonight and so much more whether you’re a casual wine sipper
Or a total cork like myself this podcast is for you so grab yourself a glass and let’s dive In I am so excited for today’s episode we’re going to be talking about one of my favorite styles of wine and that is sparkling wine this is essentially my sparkling wine 101 tasting and you’re getting access to it right here on the podcast so before we get into the
Sparkling wine itself if you’re in a place where you can enjoy some I want to encourage you to pour yourself a glass of sparkling wine and before you do that you might want some tips on how to open your sparkling wine so that’s how we’re
Going to start this off here are my kind of quick tips for making it a little easier and a little safer to opening your sparkling wine so first things first this is something that you would have had to do ahead of time so there’s nothing you can do about it now but in
The future when you’re enjoying sparkling wine make sure it is ice cold this is one of the only times I will encourage you to have wine directly from the fridge and the reason why you want this ice cold is that it will decrease the pressure inside the bottle so when
You are opening your bottle you have it super ice cold right make sure you wipe it down if it’s wet at all then you’re going to hold on to the top of the bottle and twist the bottom when you’re opening it now of course you need to
Take the cage off first if you have a style of sparkling wine that has that type of release otherwise sometimes you might find them with like the bottle cap and in which case you can just open like a you know like you would a bottle of beer but for most sparkling wines you’re
Going to see they have a cage on top that basically keeps the cork from popping off you’re going to have to take that off first so you’re going to hold down on the top of the cork as you loosen the cage as soon as you loosen that cage never release the pressure
From the top top at any point the cork could come off so you’re going to hold the top release the cage by twisting on the side now I like to take the cage off it I have smaller hands it’s hard for me to get a good grip on the cork otherwise
And so when I do this I’m very careful to you know try to keep my hand on top of the cork as much as possible but the experts say to leave the cage on so it’s up to you now once you have that off again once the cage is loosened you
Simply Hold the top so you keep putting pressure down and you twist from the bottom and you’re going to hold that bottle in your hands in about a 45° angle again it just helps with the pressure and then if it if it feels like it’s stuck which I’ve had this happen
Many times one tip is to use a towel for better grip if the cork appears stuck if you want more tips head to my Instagram or Tik Tok you can find Me @ Cork and Fizz and I have a whole video where you can see me opening that sparkling bottle
Of wine okay now we have our bubbly open if of course you’re not driving or doing something else let’s talk about sparkling wine and how it’s made before we get into the history and it’s important to know how it’s made because it kind of ties into
The history it’ll make sense in a second so regular or still wine essentially those without bubbles is made using this process called fermentation and I think we’ve talked about this a couple times here or there so during this process yeast which is is either added to our pressed grape juice or it exists
Naturally on the grape so then it exists in the juice that yeast consumes sugar from the grapes and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide when we’re making a still AKA not bubbly wine the carbon dioxide is simply released into the atmosphere we don’t need it goodbye now sparkling
Wine goes through the same process as still wine does so it goes to that fermentation the yeast consumes the sugar and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide but then so and again it actually releases the carbon dioxide into the air and you’re like wait no we needed that
Come back don’t worry more sugar and yeast are added to the product most of the time now there there is one way of making it where we’re actually going to trap it the first time but stick with me here this is a second round of fermentation so they add more sugar more
Yeast it’s going to go through a second round of fermentation and this time we’re trapping that carbon dioxide in some way so that we can get bubbles in our wine so now that you know how sparkling wine is made I can tell you how it was founded and you’re like
That’s a weird word to use why would you say who founded sparkling wine like don’t you mean they like created it and the thing is I use founded because it’s one of those things that was a result of a happy accident and they didn’t purposely try to make sparkling wine at
First so it was believed for the longest time that it was the French monk Don Peron yes that’s a fancy champagne house that he invented sparkling wine in 1697 however studies and evidence have shown that it was actually discovered SL invented SL founded whatever word you
Want to use by the Benedictine monks in the Abbey of St hir near carcassone France in 1531 so nearly what is that like 70 years earlier no matter who it was that made it the story is the same for how it was first discovered so again happy accident basically wine was bottled before
Fermentation ended so right before the yeast was done eating the sugar now often it was cold in the seller where they stored the bottles so the fermentation wouldn’t start up again until spring it was okay that there was still yeast and sugar left in the bottle because the yeast was going to just
Chill out dormant kind of like hibernate if you think about it that way but then spring came and it got warmer and at that point the fermentation started again inside the bottle and remember fermentation is Sugar Plus yeast equals alcohol in carbon dioxide that carbon dioxide built up inside the bottle and
Without a cap or a thick glass bottle it caused these bottles to explode so initially sparkling wine was something to avoid because the pressure in the bottle that caused caused one bottle to burst would then cause a ripple effect and the seller would lose 20 to 90% of
Their bottles it was actually a thing where those who worked in the cellar they would wear a heavy Iron Mask it like resembled a baseball catcher’s mask to prevent injuries from these spontaneously bursting bottles it was also at one point called The Devil’s wine both because it caused destruction
And because of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the uh unknown process of fermentation and Carbonic gas I mean at that point all they knew was well we crushed grape juice and we put it in a you know we put it in a vat and it becomes alcoholic we have no idea how
It happens it just does and so the fact that all of a sudden these bottles were exploding it didn’t make sense they didn’t know that it was this carbon dioxide that was getting trapped in the bottle now remember how I mentioned sparkling wine is made using two fermentations and during the second the
Carbon dioxide is trapped well this is the part in which different forms of sparkling wine differ so different styles of wine produce the second fermentation and trap the carbon dioxide in different ways and so we’re going to talk about the three most popular Styles there are about six in total but most of
Them are kind of variations of these three methods so first up we have the traditional method and this is also known as the champagne method and this is a method that I’m I’m sure you’re surprised since it’s called the champagne method guess what’s made using it yeah
Champagne once the wine has gone through one fermentation so again we make regular wine we do yeast plus sugar equals alcohol and carbon dioxide we have regular wine it is then transferred to a special thick glass bottle along with some more yeast and sugar then a
Crown cap AKA kind of what you’d see on a beer bottle is applied to trap the carbon dioxide and pressure inside the bottle now here notice we set a thick glass bottle and the crown cap both of those are going to prevent the bottles from exploding as they once did when it
Was initially discovered the second fermentation now occurs in the bottle now if you’re a baker you’ll know that yeast is a living thing so once it’s done with its sugar consuming alcohol and carbon dioxide producing process it dies these dead ye cells are usually removed from the bottle before we
Consume it not because they’re dangerous in any way to consume it’s usually removed for stability and preventing the wine from looking hazy and wine makers have solved this problem because you’re like well how the heck do you get the dead yeast cells out of a bottle that you’ve now trapped everything in don’t
Worry they figured this out it’s a process called riddling well it’s actually it’s three pieces there’s riddling discouragement and dosage and I’m going to walk through each of these but I also highly recommend just do a quick search on YouTube and look up
Riddling it’s r i d d l i n g then look up champagne discouragement or sparkling wine discouragement process that’s d i s g o r g m n t and then finally look up sparkling wine dosage and that is d o s a g e I’m sure you could also find a
Video that has all three but just so you can see each one separately I think it’s really cool to watch the things happen more than just listening to me talk about it but still listen to me talk about it first and then go look up a
Video okay all right so that first step is riddling so riddling involves the gradual tilting of the bottle so it ends up with its neck which is like that top part of the bottle F like the thin top thin part of the bottle facing down so
That’s what our their goal is so they’re rotating it by small increments as they’re tilting it both clockwise and anticlockwise as the angle of the Tilt increases the force of gravity draws the sediment which is those dead yeast cells into the neck of the bottle nowadays
This is often done by a machine but some producers still do this the old fashioned way which is by hand they use a shaking and twisting technique that has been practiced over the centuries by skilled Sellar Masters a good remu which is basically a fancy name for a bottle
Turner can handle roughly 40 ,000 bottles a day with the bottles placed neck down in a wooden I’m probably not saying that right but it’s an A-frame shaped riddling rack and again this is where I recommend you look this up on YouTube so you can see what this looks like now
Automated raage is now much more common they use a machine called a gyop pette I think gyop pette I again I’m not very good at this pronunciation thing and it can process about 500 bottles in just a single operation and of course these machines can work 24 hours a day and
They take a fraction of the time you know one week instead of six to do this and there’s no expense to Quality so in this case most of the time they choose machine however if places are just starting up yeah got to do it by hand so
Now that all the yeast cells are concentrated in the neck of the wine bottle it’s time for the next step in the process which is discouragement sometimes this process can look like a spray of wine everywhere but most of the time producers will basically freeze the neck of the wine
Before expelling the sediment and so they freeze again that neck is the top part of the wine bottle that’s where all our sediment is because we had the bottle basically upside down at this point and we’ve collected all the sediment so after the neck is Frozen the
Sediment which is now in the form of a frozen plug the rest of the wine is alcohol so it doesn’t freeze right it is ejected under pressure when the bottle is open so we take it advantage of the fact that there’s carbon dioxide and pressure in the bottle and so they’re
Going to open the bottle very quickly let out that Frozen plug and then quickly put their hand back over it to avoid any loss of wine and any more loss of pressure again I say cover by their hand but this is most frequently done by Machine these days but there are some
Bottle houses that still do it by hand and fun fact here before we get to our last step in the process discouragement actually triggers a sharp intake of oxygen which together with do which we’re going to talk about next will have a significant impact on Aroma development in the wine so now let’s
Talk about do this is the last step before they finally cork the bottle of wine or the cork in and this is the addition of a small quantity of what’s called leor de do to the wine and this is basically a wine and sugar mixture the amount of sugar is determined by how
Sweet you’d like the resulting wine to be so if you ever noticed with sparkling wine and we’ll talk about this in a little bit some are called Brute some are called dry or Seck or SEO all of these refer to the sweetness level in the champagne or in the sparkling wine
And this process the dosage determines that because when you think about it again the fermentation process ate up all of the sugar there is no sugar remaining in the bottle it’s only what we add to it at the end now the role of dosage in the wine sensory development
Varies according to the style of sparkling wine that you’re making if the wine maker is happy with how the wine stands the Lor de do will consist of a mixture of sugar and the same wine as the bottle holds now alternatively if a final additional Touch of Aroma is
Thought desirable that Lor de do may be made with a reserve wine some great sparkling wine that’s been set aside for long Aging in casks barrels or even Magnum so basically they’re like M something’s missing here I just I just need a little Mil grab from that other
Reserve that they’ve been waiting for and it’s kind of there to kind of help out a little bit that they want to make it perfect these will essentially add an extra Dimension to The Wine Maker’s reparatory of flavors and it creates that really nice palette to choose from
So they get that perfect Finishing Touch now a few months before dosage wine makers will basically experiment with the different Lor and find the perfect one so when it comes time to do this whole process they’ve already got it all mixed up and ready to go so that is the
Traditional method so again we do a regular fermentation then the second fermentation happens inside the bottle that is going to be the main difference with your traditional method and then because that second fermentation is done in a bottle you need to go through all those steps to get rid of the Dead yeast
So this is going to be the riddling discouragement and do and so this also tells you if you’ve ever seen a bottle of sparkling wine where it says it has a late discouragement or they use one other word too but basically some sort of late something it usually means that
They left the yeast the dead yeast in contact with the wine for a longer amount of time and what that does is it typically develops a more creamy texture and more kind of bread like Aromas in the wine okay our second method is called the tank method or also called
The charmant method and this is most famously used for prco essentially once the first fermentation is complete the wine is then transferred to pressure sealed tanks along with more yeast and more sugar and the wine goes through that second fermentation in the tank then the wine is simply transferred using a
Pressurized system to the bottle once that second fermentation is complete and since the second fermentation was all done in tank they can leave all of that dead yeast behind and there’s no need for riddling discouragement or dos it’s much simpler much easier but you need access to these
Pressurized tanks that’s one of the hardest parts of this for smaller wineries but for larger wineries this is the way to go it’s super simple it will produce different styles of wine and different flavors and Aromas and we’ll talk about that in a little bit when I
Go through some of my favorite types of sparkling wine okay our final method that we’re going to talk about is the ancestral method so basically like the ancestry method is kind of what it translates to now if you ever see a sparkling wine bottle with a crown cap
Again that’s like the beer bottle cap they’re likely made using this ancestral method this method is incredibly similar to the traditional method except it actually technically only goes through one fermentation it just does it in two parts so basically it follows exactly how sparkling w was originally made
That’s where that ancestry the ancestral method happens so but again it it has better bottles when we put the crown cap on top so uh it doesn’t explode but essentially the first fermentation starts but then it’s paused using cold temperatures remember those cold temperatures cause the yeast to
Hibernate then it started back up again once the wine is in the bottle many wines made using this enrol method are sold unfiltered so they don’t go through the riddling discouragement and dosage process that we talked about which leaves them a little cloudy and with some sediment at the bottom but again
That is not bad for you that is not dangerous to consume and these are often called petn Nats or petulant natural and so a lot of smaller wineries choose to go in this style it is very time intensive it takes a lot of effort for them but it doesn’t require any fancy
Technology of any kind and again they can choose to filter it or not and to go through that that discouragement process I’ve seen some small wineries that do that and some that just choose not to I’ve had great wines either way all right so those were our three
Methods so again we had the traditional method also called the champagne method and that is where the second fermentation happens in Bottle then you have the tank method or the charmant method and this is where the second fermentation happens in a pressurized tank and then the final method is that
Encest thr method where really it actually only goes through one fermentation but it’s paused in the middle by cooling the wine put into a bottle and then the fermentation finishes while it is in the bottle this podcast is sponsored by repour wine Savers listen I love wine
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Wine tasting Club around the court crew I can’t wait to see you there now let’s get back to the show now let’s talk a little bit about the word vintage vintage in the wine simply means the year that the grapes were harvested to make that wine however
With most sparkling wines you won’t find a year on the bottle and that is because most sparkling wines are what we call non vintage this is where multiple different years harvests are combined to produce a single bottle of wine they can do this again because that wine goes through multiple fermentations and so
They store the wine each year after the first f fermentation and then blend multiple years to reduce the flavor that they’re looking for in the sparkling wine so if your wine doesn’t have a year on it it is likely non-vintage and you might even find it saying NV somewhere
On the bottle to say that it is a non vintage wine now vintage sparkling wine does exist so there are sparkling wines that have a year on them and these are extra special because the grapes had to be incredibly good for them to create a wine without blending from other years
Now in certain regions Vinted sparkling wines also have to be aged longer so again this will develop more flavor and just make it even better but also unfortunately more expensive now last thing I want to talk about before we get into specific types of sparkling wine is sweetness and I
Promised we talk about this because sweetness and wine is already confusing and then you add sparkling wine it’s like oh my God why why are we making this so hard as many things in the wine world are the sweetness scale for sparkling wine can be hard to read but
At least they always have to label the wine in some way to let you know or most styles do a dry wine in the wine World typically means there’s little to no sugar it essentially doesn’t taste sweet now of course it wouldn’t be that easy
And this is not the case when it comes to sparkling wine so again remember dry when you’re talking about nonb wine equals not sweet however if we’re talking about a sparkling wine when we want to say a sparkling wine has little to no sugar if that’s what you’re
Looking for you’re looking for a sparkling wine with little to no sugar you’re going to look for the word brute b r u t and especially extra brute or brute natur which looks like brute nature now if you want something a little sweeter you’re going to look for
Sick sio or if you speak it Spanish or French you’ll know that I am saying dry in those languages so yes sparkling wine when it is labeled dry or the Spanish or French translation of such it is actually saying it has more sugar do I
Know why they chose to do this I do not I’m sorry I’ve done the research I’ve tried to figure it out it’s just the way that it is so essentially no sugar is brute sugar is dry sck or seyo and so if you’re looking at a scale if I were to
Give you a scale from the least sweet to the most sweet you’re going to have brute natur that means no sugar is added I’m pretty sure that is like zero grams of sugar so brute natural then extra brute then brute then dry then extra dry
And again in place of the word dry you might see SE or SEO SE O So then dry extra dry and then demc tends to be very sweet as well but we’re not going to get into that but again brute not sweet dry or sick or SEO more sweet makees sense
Hopefully that helps if you get a lot of headaches after you have sparkling wine try that brute natur option A lot of times those headaches can be caused from a combination of the alcohol and the sweetness in the wine okay it is time to talk about different types of sparkling
Wine and I’m going to walk you through five different types but I’m also going to list a ton more at the end so you can kind of go out and explore and discover on your own so first up we got to talk about the big guy we got to talk about
Champagne champagne is a sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France it’s made using the traditional method also called the champagne method and it is made with Chardon P Noir and a grape called Pino mun now not all three of these grapes have to be present in every
Champagne but only these three grapes can be used to make a champagne champagne can typically be found in the $40 to $70 price range with of course plenty of bottles in the hundreds and thousands of dollars price range one thing that makes champagne special is even the cheapest ones right so our our
Lowest tier I guess you could say have to spend a legal minimum of 12 months aging and developing flavor this results in these kind of really delicious flavors of toasted bread biscuit and cream and you might think those and wine trust me I love it I mean not everybody
Does but I certainly love it others believe that the chalky soil that you find in Champagne give this wine a very special flavor that no other region can achieve of course a lot of prestige is also simply due to the name value whenever anybody thinks of fancy wine
They think of champagne other flavors besides those that I listed earlier that you can find in Champagne include lemon yellow apple and toasted almonds okay for our next wine we’re going to talk about cremont if you are looking for a tasty bottle of sparkling wine but maybe
On a more reasonable budget I’d highly recommend cremont cremont is a group of sparkling wines that is made with the same technique as champagne but from outside the Champagne region and they’re typically named after the region in France that they do come from right remember so we’ve all heard
The saying before you can only call it a champagne if it comes from the Champagne region of France this is actually true there’s a law it it says so so it’s not people I mean it is people being a little snobby but also it’s just pure
Fact like you can’t there is exactly one wine I think in the US I think can be called champagne because they got in before this law was created and then champagne was like what the hell are you doing you’re not allowed to do that we’re going to make this law but that
Other I think it’s in California somewhere but they got grandfathered in so other than that wine you cannot call it champagne unless it comes from the Champagne region of France now if it’s made in the exact way that a champagne is made but it comes from a different
Region in France you will call it a cremont now the region again remembered we said the region is often in the name of the wine it also determines what grapes are used so for example a cronton which comes from the burgundy region of France is just south of champagne and it
Uses the same Pon Noir and chardonay grapes one of my favorite crants is a cremont deura this region is southeast of champagne and it is just east of burgundy and it typically uses Chardonnay and its sparkling wine and so good you also have a kont de Limu and
This is so Limu is l i m o uux yeah it doesn’t look anything like what I’m saying this is a sparkling wine that comes from the LOD do in the southern French area and this is where sparkling wine was believed to be founded and it’s actually believed that D Peron made a
Pilgrimage to the monks in this region in the longa do to learn how to make sprackling wine crants typically fall in the $5 to $30 range I would trust a cremont at $15 it’s going to be wonderful and delicious flavors differ depending on the region but they can
Include anything from White Cherry Lemon white apricot toasted bread and almonds again it’s going to depend where it’s made if you’re curious The Grapes that are used in some of these regions so we have a Cante all sauce this is primarily Pino Blanc Peno GRE resling Chardon and
P Noir we’ve already talked about burgundies so are kante buron it’s primarily P Noir and chardonay then there’s a kont de Bordeaux primarily Mero along with Cabernet Fran you can also use Cabernet Savon carier Malbec and petite Vero saon Blan and seon so Bordeaux has a lot of options you might
Also be kind of curious you’re like you are listing a lot of red wines for a sparkling wine is this this is still a white wine but but the Skins are not put in contact with the grape juice so we end up making a white wine from red
Grapes kind of cool right we also talked about kont deura and again I said this is made mostly using chardonay but you can also find pin Noir Ward Savin p g and truso there’s also kont deir this uses Shannon Blanc Cabernet Fran and P Noir and then kont de leemu this is
Chardonay as well as Shannon Blan mozak and Pino Noir and if you want to learn more about each of these French wine regions go check out my previous episodes I have a French wine 101 and a French wine 101 Part Two where I dig into each of these wine regions a little
Bit more in case you’re curious I don’t talk about the sparkling wine but I do talk about the region itself okay we’re going to head out of France now and into Spain to talk about Cava Cava is made using the traditional method so the same as champ
But it’s made in Spain and it can be made anywhere in Spain but most of it comes from the Catalonia region in Northeast Spain near Barcelona these wines are typically made with the local Spanish grapes you have maabo Parada and zerel however you can also use chardonay
And P Noir these wines are perfect for the pocketbook I’ve had great Cava for under $10 and honestly some of the best Cava I’ve had aka the Cava that I served at my wedding for the toasts was just $155 a bottle it had some Chardonnay in it oh
It was lovely wonderful we still have one bottle left we’ve been having one every year on our anniversary for the ones that were left over I may have overbought but I’m not mad about it and it’s been really lovely though last time it was it had lost a lot of flavor so
This last one might be over the hill a little bit but it’s still kind of special these wines so the Cava they tend to be a little more fruity and floral than champagne they’re not required to age as long as champagne is which would kind of explain that but
They are just as flavorful you get lime Quint apple almond and chamomile in these wines next up we have a prco of course if we’re talking about sparkling wine we can’t leave out prco prco is made using the tank method so that charmont second fermentation in a
Pressurized tank and it’s made with a grape called GLA now funny story here I always love to tell the story I don’t know how much of it is true because I read it a couple times and then sometimes I have a hard to find reading
It but anyway I want to believe this is true so we’re just going to believe that it is true the grape itself that made prco used to actually be called prco so it was actually the grape that was called prco but the problem was that when you have a grape called prco that
Means any region in the world can make a prco wine kind of like how like you know the grape is called chardonay so we can make chardonay anywhere and the people in prco did didn’t love this they didn’t like that anybody could make what they were making they wanted to have the same
You know kind of authority that champagne did or at least the same protection that champagne did so they and I think the final strong this is the part where I’m like not 100% sure if it’s correct but Paris Hilton made a prco and she put it in cans and she went
On a talk show and she talked about how she made prco wine and this is apparently what the last straw was for those in prco and so no hate against Paris Hil I just I think it’s hilarious so they found a town near the region that was
Called prco H the region where they were making they were growing all these grapes and so they basically created a border around this town and said all right this is our prco region and also y’all have been calling the grape the wrong thing it’s called glara and this
Glarea was actually a past term that was used for the grape so it’s not that it was wrong but it also wasn’t right but they were like no it’s it’s called glara and see we have this region called prco and so now you can only call your
Wine prco if it comes from this region of Italy I am probably like I said if there are any prco producers out there please don’t hate me I just think it’s a funny story and you know you deserve the protection you deserve it so prco made in a very different way from Champagne
It is a lot more citrus tree fruit think like apple and pear but a tropical as well with the pineapple and mango it’s a tad bit of cream but normally the fru wins out so it’s not going to have that creamy texture or that bread kind of
Like Flavor bottles of prco usually fit in the8 to $20 range and to me these are perfect sparkling wines for cocktails I think they have like just the right amount of bubbly all right the final line that I’m going to dig into comes from Italy as well so I guess yeah I
Guess we only really hit on France Spain and Italy but we’ll talk more about other sparkling wines from other regions so this is a sparkling wine called lambu Lambrusco to many people is that cheap sweet red wine that tastes like soda and admittedly I felt that way too for a
While all the Lambrusco wines that I had up until a couple years ago just weren’t that great but I can tell you now that there are some really amazing lamb brusos being made its reputation is changing and some just really incredible producers are stepping in and making
High quality stuff so let’s get into what exactly it is lamb Brusco is actually a fan family a very old grape varieties that are native to Italy so most of the wines are a blend of many different distinct Lambrusco grapes the majority of Lambrusco is produced in an
Area called Amelia Roman this is also the area known for its pesano and so they’re known they’re basically like the food capital of the world like they’ve got the parmesan there’s something else there too that they’re famous for I want to say it’s a type of meat and then they have
Lambrusco so the Lambrusco is literally just meant to be like fun it’s meant to go with this food and just meant to be like a fun enjoyable pairing it doesn’t take itself too seriously now these LM brusos they range in sweetness from dry to super sweet and
I think most people are more familiar with the super sweet version nothing wrong if you like that but if you don’t like it go look for a dry lamb Brusco so again the best are the the drier ones versus the barely or somewhat sweet versions and then of course the very sweet
Versions okay now like I said we’ve only talked about five different styles of sparkling wine there are so many others so just to name a few you have Treno do this is a sparkling wine that is produced in the classical method in trentino Italy you have methodo Classico
This is a sparkling wine made using the traditional method anywhere in Italy you have Moscato deast a sweet sparkling wine made in ATI of Italy you have pet petulant natural we mentioned this a little bit this is a wine typically made in the US so I’m seeing it from other
Countries in the world now using that ancestral method capup Classic this is a sparkling wine from South Africa made with chardonay Shannon Blanc and Pino Noir and then sect s KT this is a sparkling wine from Germany I’ve seen it made in both like the tank style and the
Traditional style and then of course you have domestic sparklings which are just the sparkling wines made here in the US and again spar wine is made all across the world okay do you have more questions about sparkling wine what do you want to know message me on Instagram
@ coren Fizz or send me an email Haley coren fizz.com and then let me know which sparkling wine will you be trying next I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Cork and Fizz guide to Wine podcast if you loved it as much as I enjoyed
Talking to you I would so appreciate a quick second to rate and leave a review and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode we release new episodes every Wednesday in next week’s episode I’ll be doing a deep dive into an Italian grape variety called Barbara
This is my goto Pizza wine and super fun super affordable I love it and I can’t wait to tell you more about it thanks again for listening and as a thank you I’d like to share my free Shopping Guide 15 wines under $15 simply head to my website corkin fizz.com
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