Bubbling Over

As you know, carbon dioxide is one of the byproducts of fermentation. So, it was probably only a matter of time until people started carbonating wine. There is, however, some debate as to when and where the process started.

France
For years, people have looked at Limoux in the Languedoc. The story is that the monks of Saint-Hilaire were making sparking Mauzac back in the 1500s. Purportedly, they used what’s now called the Ancestral Method (used today for Pétillant Naturel sparklers), in which you transfer your fermenting wine from its fermentation container to bottles and stop the yeast activity by cooling the wine. Heck, we’ve told that story for years. Imagine our surprise when we learned that wine writer and sparkling wine expert Tom Stevenson claims that there’s no hard evidence that the French were sparkling wine before 1695.

Stevenson’s claim takes us to a monk named Dom Pierre Pérignon. Brother Dom Pierre is credited with introducing sparkling wine to Champagne in the 1600s. Legend is that Brother Dom developed the Traditional Method of sparkling wine in 1668. (Obviously, Stevenson must have words about that.) This method is still used today, where once your fermentation has finished and you’ve bottled your wine, you induce a smaller, controlled, secondary fermentation in the bottle that sparkles the wine. However, there’s a 1662 document from the Royal Society in London (That’s right, London, England.) that has nothing to do with Brother Dom, that outlines the Traditional Method.

One thing that is clear is that within a century of its appearance, sparkling wine became a national and even international commodity. In 1729, Ruinart arrived as the first commercial Champagne house. However, it was Moët & Chandon in 1745, who became the first Champagne house to make it to the French royal court. The courts of England followed. Veuve Clicquot was founded in 1772, and legend has it that Madame Clicquot working off the suggestion of an employee named Antoine Muller, invented the riddling process to remove yeast from wine bottles that were being sparkled. With secondary bottle fermentation and riddling, we have set the stage for French sparkling wines as we mostly know them today.

Italy
Of course, France is not the only country with a sparkling wine tradition. In 1st Century Italy, Plinio il Vecchio wrote of how Roman Empress Livia lived a long life due to wine from Pucino, which comes from the Prosecco region. Still, it’s not until 1754 that we see some evidence of regional Prosecco winemakers sparkling wine using the Ancestral Method. The big change in Prosecco was the adoption in 1895 of the Charmat Method for sparkling wine.

In the Charmat Method, instead of inducing a secondary fermentation in the bottle, you do so in large, pressurized fermentation vessels. This change allowed winemakers to sparkle more wines, faster. Most likely, it was Frenchman Edme-Jules Maumené who first experimented with secondary tank fermentation. However, the 1800s were the inventor-rich age of the ascendency of science and engineering, and Piedmontese Italian Federico Martinotti beat Maumené to the patent. Working from the timeline, it seems that it was Martinotti’s process that Prosecco winemakers first grabbed onto. Ah, but France came from behind for the win in 1907, when Eugène Charmat patented a new design for a pressurized stainless steel tank for sparkling wine, and it’s his name that we use for the method today.

Spain
Stepping back a few decades and shifting geography to Spain, in 1872 Penedès winemaker Josep Raventós Fatjó experimented with using the traditional method to sparkle wines made from his area’s native grapes — Macabeu, Parellada, and Xarel-lo. His family had been making wine since 1497 but not like this. The legend says that Fatjó was so pleased with his new sparklers that he ordered a cave to be dug for the new wines. This Spanish sparkling wine and its appellations are now known as “Cava.”

This wine Wednesday, we turn our glasses to sparkling wine. As you can see, we have a wide range to choose from. Please join us for another of our free, walk-up tastings any time between 5:00 and 6:30.