Champagne

Champagne sits at the northern edge of where grapes ripen at all, and for most of its history that was a problem: the wine was thin and sharp. The bubbles started as a fault. Fermentation stalled in the cold winter and restarted in spring, by which time the wine was in bottle, and the bottles sometimes exploded - often enough that cellar workers wore masks.

The English had both a taste for the fizz and stronger coal fired glass that could hold the pressure, so they were the first to sell it deliberately. The French spent the next two centuries working out how to produce it reliably.

1. 1Make a thin, high acid base wine. On its own it’s unpleasant to drink, and that’s correct.
2. 2Blend - across plots, across varieties, and usually across years. This blend, the assemblage, is where a house’s style actually lives.
3. 3Bottle with a little sugar and yeast, and seal. A second fermentation happens inside the bottle, trapping the carbon dioxide.
4. 4Leave the wine resting on the dead yeast cells for years. This is where the brioche, biscuit and toast notes come from.
5. 5Riddle: gradually tilt and turn the bottle until the sediment collects in the neck.
6. 6Disgorge: freeze the neck, pop out the plug of sediment, top up with a dosage of wine and sugar that sets the final sweetness.

The whole sequence takes a minimum of 15 months by law and often 5 to 10 years in practice. That time is most of the cost.

Chardonnay brings acid, citrus and the capacity to age. Pinot Noir brings body and red fruit weight. Pinot Meunier brings early drinking fruitiness and reliability in frost prone sites. Two of the three are red grapes, pressed gently and quickly so no colour is extracted - which is how a white wine is made from black fruit.

A blanc de blancs is all Chardonnay: lean, precise, long lived. A blanc de noirs is all black grapes: broader and richer. And rosé Champagne is the one place in France where blending red wine into white isn’t only legal but standard.

The names are in that order because the scale was never renamed. They date from an era when Champagne was drunk far sweeter than it is now, and each one has stayed attached to its band of sugar while the wine around it got drier.