giving the gift of bubbles? get the low down on what that fizz actually is.
Here in Godzone, we celebrate longer days, summer holidays, ocean swims, picnics in the park, the birth of baby Jesus, the visit of St Nick, and the start of a brand new year all in the space of a few weeks. Chuck in a summer wedding or two and hands up all those poor bastards with birthdays at this time of year and it proves to be thirsty work. Thankfully there is one extremely reliable beverage that faithfully transcends all of the above. Our favourite fizz.
One of the only wines we don’t hesitate to champion as a breakfast wine, fizz is the obligatory celebratory sip we toast to all the good things in life.
We Aotearoa islanders are big fans of it. It has been reported that sales of the Italian style fizz, Prosecco have increased by 40% over the last year or two and at one point there New Zealand was a major market for Champagne Bollinger (per capita).
Not all fizz is the same, poignantly reflected by price but what is the actual diff when it really comes down to it?
Here’s a bit of a glossary on the good stuff so you can make the most of that toast!
Fun Fizz Fact
You can’t call anything, no matter how sparkly, Champagne if it is not made in Champagne, France.
CHAMPAGNE
Champagne is a sparkling wine produced in Champagne, France. The appellation (or region) has extremely intense rules that govern how the wine must be made. It includes adhering to very specific practices, both in the vineyard and in the cellar. Where the grapes are harvested from, how they are crushed to get the precious juice, down to how the fizzy gets its fizz, are all parts of a process that complies with the strict AOC rules (Appellation d’Originie Contrôlée). The grapes , also adhering to the AOC guidelines, used for Champagne are pre-dominantly Pinot noir, Chardonnay and Pinot meunier.
The base wine or still wine-pre fizz, can be left to ferment and mature in oak barrels for maybe a year or longer, depending on the vintage and the winemakers preference. The wine is then removed from the barrels and popped into bottles. It’s not fizzy yet.
The fizz in Champagne comes from a second fermentation and that occurs in the bottle. The first ferment will have been completed already as natural yeasts and fruits sugars will have exhausted months ago so, to instigate that second ferment, new yeast and a small amount of rock sugar is added to the bottle (the yeast needs something to eat i.e.) the sugar to start a reaction that creates carbonation…the bubbles are finally starting to happen!) But, in accordance with those strict rules, a minimum of 1.5 years is required to completely develop all the flavour, the fizz and be called a ‘proper’ Champagne by French standards.
NV vs. something like 1996
NV is non-vintage which means a blend of the barrel wine from different vintages and seasons has been created to craft a consistent ‘house style’. We like this consistency when we’re quaffing our Champs. That consistency is how the houses define themselves. It’s how you know you’re drinking a Pol Roger and not a Taittinger. Brand loyalty in Champagne is a pretty big deal.
Champagne that lists the year reflects a vintage that the winemakers and the regional authoristies deemed to be exceptional and a millésime is declared! The rules change slightly and the bottles must wait a little longer in the cellar — at least 3 years. (NB: 1996 was a pretty decent year for Champers)
You’ll probably recognise images of Champagne bottles placed in racks in beautiful, romantic underground wine cellars. Thanks to gravity, there’s a lot of dead yeast on one side of the bottle now and that needs to be removed before we can drink it. The problem is, the wine is also now fizzy. One false move and that bitter, cloudy, pancake batter-like yeastie stuff will quickly destroy the wine if it’s disturbed. So, a process called ‘Remuage’ (in English, we call it riddling) is undertaken to gently coax that yeastie pancake batter / sediment to the neck of the bottle so it can be removed, or disgorged — to throw another techie term your way. It’s a labour intensive job and the real pros can riddle up to 50,000 bottles a day.
Et voila — here’s a wee vid to help you visualise the set up.
Large Champagne houses worked very hard to court the upper class and nobility and the wine style became synonymous with royalty in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Some of the large, well-known houses have been granted Royal Warrants. As we all want a bit of that bling what those buggers have, the fever for Champagne was pitched and has never really cooled off. Indeed, Her Madge reportedly had a glass of Champers every evening just before nigh-night. Lucky old Liz (may she rest in peace).
Side note on ‘Grower Champagne’ — very few of the big Champagne house own their own vineyards. Instead, they contract growers and those growers selected can demand a better price and garner the reputation of being the top of the pops (so to speak). However, there is a shift to trying ‘grower champagnes’ and the clue is in the title. Some growers have chosen to make their own wine from their own grapes.
PROSECCO
Prosecco is made in Italy and it isn’t always spumante 🤌 (that’s Italian for sparkling). It can be tranquilo (still) too but if you’re in Aotearoa, chances are your flute will be fizzy.
Prosecco is a village in Italy and where the wine gets its name from but the wine itself is made across a large number of regions in Northern Italy. Like the French, the Italians do have some strict regulations around protecting their wine production . The DOC (Denominazione di origine controllata) will set the tone for where within those regions is rated top notch as in the case of Prosecco Superiore. If you see ‘superiore’ it will definitely be spumante and it will be from very specific parts of those regions.
Like Champagne, Prosecco gets its carbonation from a second fermentation. However, for the most part, this happens in very large stainless steel tanks not in the individual bottle. That right there reduces the cost of production and goes a long way to answering the cost price when you’re comparing Champs with Prosecco. Here’s the other key difference. Production rules by DOC dictate that Prosecco has a minimum production time of 30 days. Staggeringly less than our French friends if you recall. That means this wine can enter the market for sale at least 17 months earlier than Champagne, reducing cellaring and storage costs insanely. It’s important to note here, there are higher tiers of Prosecco that have longer minimum production requirements but even then we’re talking 9 months instead of 18.
The wine is traditionally dry, which is why it’s so bloody refreshing when served chilled on a hot day, and it also is made to be enjoyed in its youth. In other words, don’t buy Prosecco for your pal to save. Pop and scoff it, veloce!
If you do see a more expensive bottle of Prosecco on the shelf, it may well have been made by a producer keen to emmulate the French by letting second fermentation occur in the bottle. In a lovable, classic Italian way, this is also allowed by the DOC because (shrug shoulders) why not?
Prosecco is made from a grape variety called Glera and must contain at least 85% Glera if blended with other varieties. It’s worthy to note, that it’s only since 2020 that the DOC rules have bent enough to allow a Prosecco Rosé to be included in the production. The Glera fruit is permitted to be blended with Pinot Noir to give the blush rosé the market is so feverish for.
Both Champagne and Prosecco are parts of Europe that have a deeply rich history of wine production — think Roman times when dudes like Pliny the Elder were knocking about getting all philosophical riffing on the meaning of life and supping on cups of wine. It is documented that early Roman soldiers where rationed with 3 litres of wine per day when in battle. (I’d want to be black-out drunk fighting battles holding a sword wearing sandals too, to be honest) The point is, making is wine is deeply entrenched in these parts of the planet but in the case of Prosecco, and again, unlike Champagne, the rest of the world was really late to get a taste for it. We’re talking early 2000’s by the time the USA and UK started to get a whiff of what demand might look like for this Italian sparkler.
It’s fair to say the horse has truly bolted with global consumption of Prosecco outside Italy reaching such demand that Italy now producers the most sparkling wine of all sparkling wines made in the world — ahead of France.
Prego!
traditional method / NZ SPARKLING WINE
Now that you’ve got a slightly firmer hand on the difference between the most consumed sparkling wines on the planet, it’s time to discuss shopping local.
Of the some 700 New Zealand wineries, there aren’t many making fizz but the ones that are making it, are absolutely nailing it. Generally called a Méthode Traditionnelle, these wines give you a clue to the quality control around how the wine is produced in the title. Traditional Method is what it says it is. Sparkling wine made in the traditional method of Champagne. We don’t have the sort of governing bodies that the French or Italians do but our appreciation of the craft is deeply entrenched and much the same way that we still look to Burgundy for the bench mark of shit-hot pinot noir, so too do we look to Champagne when it comes to fizz. The varietal blend of grapes, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay work well for New Zealand vineyards so we’re already half way there.
Many of the wine makers choosing to dabble in the fizzy drink have spent time learning the craft in Champagne or they’ve been mentored by someone who has or they are French living in Aotearoa. Take Daniel Le Brun and the Le Brun family for example. Daniel, a Frenchman who moved to New Zealand established some pretty firm roots and passion for the wine style. The family biz, No.1 Family Estate, not only make some of the best fizz but they’re massive supporters of those joining the movement. Claire Allan, winemaker at Huia Estate, did a tenure at Taittinger Champagne house and the Huia Blanc de Blancs* (which is always made as a vintage wine, never a NV) is a favourite with many of the hospo lifers out there. Rudi Bauer at Quartz Reef has taken to the craft like a duck to water. The Bendigo sub-region of Central Otago, where Quartz Reef is located, certainly lends itself to making stunningly, clean, crisp dry sparkling wines.
Consider the time is takes to make these wines. If we take the current release Huia sparkling wines it is the vintage 2018. That’s fruit harvested in 2018 so that’s a whole year paying the vineyard team prior to harvest, then the harvest team, then buying the barrels and bottles all done before you’ve even got wine to enjoy. Then they ferment in barrel for a year before transferring the juice to the bottle to sit for a further 2 to 3 years before being released and sold to us, the punters, the normies out there, who have no idea how much investment has already been made to bring us that bottle of light.
Now consider this: the local sparkling wines that you can buy that have been made to the same production standards as Champagne generally come in at half the price. That is INSANE!
These locally made, hand-crafted New Zealand sparkling wines won’t let you down. They’ll delight and surprise and they will categorically over deliver on price. So, next time you’re in line for a sparkling wine, give a kiwi a crack. New Zealand sparkling wine made the traditional way just harks to the hundreds of years of craft behind it and at the same time celebrates our land, our place and the infancy yet incredible audacious determination shown by our kiwi winemakers. Now that’s something to truly toast to!!
*a Blanc de Blancs is a sparkling wine made from 100% Chardonnay. It is the ‘white of whites’ and considered to be the most noble of the sparkling wines.
It must be noted, that many other countries also make their own version of Champagne. The Spanish call their fizzy Cava, the Germans call theirs Sekt and even the French not living in Champagne but making sparkling wine and who can’t call it Champers, call it Crément.
PÉT NAT / Pétillant Naturel — méthode ancestral
This is ye olde world wine making big time stylie. Méthode Ancestral is probably what Adam and Eve were knocking back once that half eaten apple started to ferment.
By far the oldest method of making sparkling wine, méthode ancestral preceded the traditional method by a couple of hundred years or maybe more. Made originally in France by monks (where would we be without them?) somewhere around the early 1500’s. Méthode Ancestral is required to adhere to the tight regulations of the AOC but the wine style has transcended borders long before the AOC was formed. The ‘contrôlée’ ain’t so tight on this one.
Pét Nat (as we call here and in Aussie) is made in Germany, the US, Australia, Aotearoa and just about anywhere you can grow grapes and drink good coffee. That’s possibly factual and a bit facetious really but the flag of Pét Nat is frequently flown by those of us with a love of the good stuff and who don’t mind breaking a few rules in order to get more of the good stuff. That’s a complement, by the way.
Pét Nat can perhaps be a little more volatile than Champagne, Prosecco or traditional method sparkling wine. There are techie winemaker reasons behind this which include a little nature and chemistry combined. For those eager to swot it up, the wikipedia page on Sparkling wine production has a great explanation on how this wine is made.
One thing to celebrate about the love affair we’re all having with Pét Nat is that this little bottle of wine is a beautiful way to pay homage to the real craft and historical traditions of wine making while tasting something fresh and new and that feels like it has a foot firmly in the camp of innovation. That sounds a lot like the kiwi pysche and very worthy of installing a bottle opener to the kitchen bench so you can snap that crown cap in a jot and get down to a glass of good fizz.
Hopefully this run down makes the biz of fizz a little easier. Regardless of what the bubbles in your glass actually is, this is one wine style that makes you feel like good times are imminent.
we’re super grateful to our pals at antipodes water company. they supply us with the good water for our chats. antipodes is an artesian water that contains no chemicals, and when you’re pouring an organic wine that is gold. the mineral content also keeps the palate fresh so you can taste the wine the way the winemaker and nature intended you to. thanks antipodes, you’re the bomb. antipodes.co.nz
