Sparkling wine is well known for its bubbles that race to the surface. Sparkling wine such as champagne from grape is produced by secondary fermentation in closed containers such as bottles or tanks to retain the carbon dioxide produced.
In California in the nineteenth century, and in many other countries as well, it was entirely acceptable for winemakers to label their sparkling wines as ‘champagne’.
If it was wine - of the fermented juice of the grape- and it is was charged with bubbles produced by carbon dioxide trapped in the bottles it could be called ‘Champaign’ wherever it was made. It can be called Australian champagne or Argentine champagne.
Modern sparkling wine was first developed in the Champagne region of France in the 1700s, and was the results of two seventeenth century winemaking inventions: the cork and the wine bottles.
According to the legend, sparkling wine was first discovered in France by Dom Pierre Perignon, who was a monk in the Champagne region. Dom Pierre Perignon was resurrected as the inventor of sparkling wine and the founder of the champagne industry.
He actually stumbled upon this fine wine while performing his duties as a cellar master in the Benedictine Abbey.
A batch so his white wine started a spontaneous second fermentation in the bottle.
Dom would hide his discovery for many years as the public respond in the way that he had been hoping.
The formula and techniques that Dom used to produce his sparkling wine eventually become known as the traditional way of making Champagne.
Winemakers in northern Italy produced sparkling wine a thousand years before Dom Perignon’s time, but by a much different process.
Ancient sparkling wine was made in the winter, and allowed to freeze in the middle of the fermentation process, trapping carbon dioxide bubbles in the frozen wine.
In California the first successful sparkling wine was Arpad Haraszthy’s ECLIPSE, whose cuvée from the late 1860s to the 1880s was predominantly Zinfandel made as a blanc de noirs.
Arpad Haraszthy was a pioneer of California winemaker.
*Note:
Cuvée is a French wine term derived from cuvee, meaning vat or tank.
Zinfandel – is a variety of red grape
History of sparkling wine