Toil and trouble

NOTHING says festive season more aptly than the pop of a cork from a bottle of fizz, but in these times of tight belts and Scroogish sentiment, shall we shave the Christmas spend a tad by going for the cheaper option this Noel?

French Champagne is synonymous with largess, with days of plenty. It’s a statement to the world (or at least the others in the bar) that “I deserve this little glass of decadence”.

Now, we make a similar product here in Australia, but of course we have to call it sparkling wine and not Champagne as the French seem to have their knickers in a twist over naming rights. The thing is, the Aussie version is, in the most part, less expensive than the French. So should we spend more on a bottle of pop when less will seemingly do?

Thankfully there is a solution, and it’s all got to do with how the bubbles get in the bottle. The cheapest versions of festive fizz are made on a large scale, as still white wine in stainless steel tanks. Once this wine is made, carbon dioxide is then pumped into the solution under pressure to give it its bubbles, a process very similar to the production of soft drink.

As you can imagine, this is a pretty cheap way of doing things and the result is often a relatively unbalanced sparkling that is one dimensional in the flavour stakes.

The other way to make the cork go pop is the traditional method the French have been using for centuries. It’s called Methode Champenoise.

Champagne producers pick their fruit and make a base wine, this wine is then bottled and a solution or ‘dosage’ is added to the bottle. This solution contains loads of interesting goodies including sugar and yeast. These two ingredients are the essential components for fermentation, so inside the bottle of wine a second fermentation happens.

Obviously, alcohol is one of the by-products of fermentation; the other is carbon dioxide. So now we have a slightly more alcoholic bottle of wine that has loads of carbon dioxide that can’t escape, as the bottle is a closed system, so it disappears into solution, ready to spring forth when you pop the top and voila, Champagne.

This is a much more time-consuming process but the result is worlds apart from its poorer cousin mentioned earlier. Methode Champenoise wines have delicacy and nuance, the flavours are integrated, the bead of the bubbles is fine and languid as they rise through the glass and release in your mouth like little liquid fireworks.

The good news is those grumpy Frenchies haven’t laid claim to this process, so there is a swath of great Methode Champenoise sparkling made in Australia under brands you already know. The conundrum of what to drink this Christmas is solved – whether it’s French or Australian, as long as it says Methode Champenoise on the label, you’re taste buds will thank you.

My pick this year is the Domiane Chandon range of wines out of the Yarra. They are tightly packed with freshness and vibrancy and luscious fruit sweetness all integrated with this fine framework of effervescence – excellent Christmas day festive fizz.