Sparkling
Just wanting to find the sparkling wines we sell, scroll down...
Otherwise, here are a few lesser known details...
Sparkling wine is a wine with significant levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in it, making it bubbly. Both red and white grape varietals are used.
While sparkling wine is colloquially often referred to as champagne, EU regulations legally reserve that term for products exclusively produced in the Champagne region of France.
Sparkling wines can be made using a different number of vinification techniques:
- Méthode Traditionelle. Still wine is bottled before additional yeast and sugar are added. The fermentation of the yeast produces alcohol, which in turn releases CO2 into the bottled wine. Champagne is made this way, as a number of other high quality sparkling wines, e.g. Crémant and Mousseux de Qualite in France or Cava in Spain.
- Tank Method. The secondary fermentation is carried out in a tank, not bottles. The wine is then bottled under pressure. Italian Prosecco is one sparkling wine typically produced this way.
- Ancestral Method. This production method avoids secondary fermentation and the wine finishes fermenting under cork without the addition of yeasts or sugar resulting in more cloudy, unfiltered wines. Pétillant-naturel (or pét-nat) sparkling wines use this method.
- Various other methods exist, often combining some elements of the above techniques, e.g. the Transfer and Continuous Methods (used in German bulk Sekt). Carbonation, i.e. injecting CO2 directly into still wine (like soda) is generally considered an inferior method as the bubbles dissipate fast.