If you choose to join the God of the grape har­vest in his trance-inducing quest to lib­er­ate human­ity, you shall pre­pare to make the Cham­pagne region of France your new abode. To all nymphs: “Come hither” says Dionysus.

Cham­pagne is one of the world’s most famous wines, beloved by con­nois­seurs and layper­sons alike. It enjoys a glam­orous rep­u­ta­tion, and it is of course de rigueur when it comes to cel­e­brat­ing any­thing. How­ever, it doesn’t require a spe­cial occa­sion: it’s just as good to drink on an aver­age week­night as it is on New Year’s Eve.

When speak­ing of Cham­pagne, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that the word refers exclu­sively to wines made in the Cham­pagne region of France. This is not snob­bery, nor is it an insis­tence that one drink only real Cham­pagne. There are plenty of excel­lent sparkling wines made in other regions of the world: I would per­son­ally rec­om­mend those by Roed­erer Estate and Iron Horse in Cal­i­for­nia; Gra­mona and Raven­tós i Blanc in Catalunya; or Bründl­mayer and Schloss Gob­els­burg in Aus­tria, for exam­ple. Yet as good as these sparkling wines are, they shouldn’t be called Cham­pagne. Why? And why does it matter?

As with other French wines, such as Bor­deaux or Bur­gundy, Cham­pagne is named for a spe­cific place. Wine from the Cham­pagne region exhibits a par­tic­u­lar and inim­itable char­ac­ter, derived from where it is grown and how it is made. The late Pas­cal Leclerc, pro­pri­etor of Cham­pagne Leclerc-Briant, liked to explain it this way: “Cham­pagne can only be made in Cham­pagne. Why? First, we have very bad weather. Sec­ond, we have our three grape vari­eties, and chalky soil and all that. Third, we have 330 pages of regulations.”

The joke is funny because it’s true: strict reg­u­la­tions detail­ing autho­rized grape vari­eties, accepted viti­cul­tural prac­tices or min­i­mum length of aging all play a role in shap­ing Champagne’s char­ac­ter. But most fun­da­men­tal of all is the geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion of the Cham­pagne vine­yards them­selves. No mat­ter how faith­fully and dili­gently one applies the same wine­mak­ing tech­niques, a sparkling wine made out­side of the Cham­pagne region can never achieve an iden­ti­cal character—it will not nec­es­sar­ily be infe­rior, but it will be dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent, due in large part to dif­fer­ences in soil and climate.

For many peo­ple, this is entirely triv­ial. Most con­sumers pay lit­tle atten­tion to what’s in their glass, so long as it’s fizzy. But for those who are inter­ested in the details of things (and you wouldn’t be read­ing this blog if you weren’t), a lit­tle explo­ration into the sub­ject can be intrigu­ing. It’s often true that the more you learn about what it is you’re engaged in, the greater your enjoy­ment of it becomes. Know­ing the spe­cific prop­er­ties of Neapoli­tan tai­lor­ing or Northamp­ton shoe­mak­ing, for instance, allows one to bet­ter appre­ci­ate these things (and, I might add, makes one more will­ing to pay the price that they com­mand). In the case of Cham­pagne, you may be a par­ti­san of a par­tic­u­lar brand, and indeed, the mar­ket­ing of Cham­pagne has his­tor­i­cally been heav­ily brand-oriented. It’s reward­ing, how­ever, to go beyond the brand and dis­cover what makes a par­tic­u­lar Cham­pagne spe­cial, and to learn how good Cham­pagne dif­fers from the merely ordinary.

I encour­age you to explore the world of sparkling wines, includ­ing both those from the Cham­pagne region and those made else­where. Just be sure to call them by their proper names.

This post is cour­tesy of A Suit­able Wardrobe.

To look pre­sentable before the God of Trance, return to our home­page to learn about cus­tom dress shirts.

–Jay

 

Categories:Libations, News

Tags: caravaggio, champaign, dionysus, wine making