In this interview, Huon Hooke speaks with Anthony Rose, contributor, author and sparkling wine expert, about the state of sparkling wine and Champagne around the world and his new book Fizz!.
Buoyed by results in competitions and growing consumer
awareness, producers in emerging countries and regions have taken
advantage of climate change and consumer trends to try their hand at
making bubbles and finding, perhaps as much to their surprise as ours,
that they’re really rather good at it.
Terroir no longer has to be reverentially whispered with a French accent.
Once regarded as little more than country cousins attempting, at
best, to reproduce Champagne itself, today’s producers of fizz have become
confident exponents of the style. Where once sparkling wine was
regarded as a wine of celebration, today it comes in a range of styles in
which celebration may play a role but is not the be-all and end-all. A
growing global thirst for fizz, abetted by a serious approach to making
sparkling wine from quality grapes, has resulted in a reappraisal of the
style. Now that fizz can be enjoyed as an aperitif, an ice breaker or with
food, it has become a wine for all occasions.
In its best expression, Champagne remains a yardstick of incredible achievement for
both consumers and producers, but it is merely one yardstick. Its very
familiarity can sometimes obscure the fact that sparkling wines from
emerging wine countries and regions don’t have to be Champagne imitators
and can express the character of fizz in different ways.
In his book Anthony aims to shine a light on this new sparkling
wine phenomenon beyond the frontiers of Champagne, focusing on the
newcomers, exploring how they’ve carved out an identity for themselves
and reviewing their direction of travel, with all the excitement that the
genuine prospect of a new sparkling wine world order brings.
Buy Fizz!
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