Methode Champenoise or Methode Australienne?

These days you know you don’t get much in a bottle of sparkling wine unless it has the term `Methode Champenoise’ sprawled across the label. It means that the bottle in question had been made with a technique similar to that employed in Champagne itself, or so we are lead to believe.

Go to Champagne and they will tell you very quickly what they believe are the special factors that make their wine the true taste phenomenon it actually is. The grapes, the soils, the time on lees. The blending, the ageing, the careful liqueuring, to name a few.

Nearly every major wine company in terms of size in Australia markets a `Methode Champenoise’, which retails at between five and seven dollars. Are they made from the varieties of pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay? Some un-Champagne-like blend of chenin blanc, gordo, trebbiano or gordo, more like.

Are they grown on soil conditions resembling those of Champagne? This isn’t quite as important, I agree, but we are borrowing their name to sell our wine. By the way, Clare and Coonawarra are based partly and wholly on chalk.

Do we leave our non-vintage wines on lees for a minimum of twelve months, and vintage wines for three years? Some do, but the vast majority do not. The legal requirement in Australia for the use of the words `methode Champenoise’ is six months. Sound evidence suggests that this is the time after which some yeast character begins to emerge.

Do we blend our wines from a pool of different vineyards planted to the different varieties, in different locations, in order to increase complexity? Again, a few do. The overwhelming number of local Methode Champenoise wines would either all come from the one vineyard, or else from huge expanses of monocultural vineyard land in the river areas.

Do we blend carefully-matured base-wines to the current vintage prior to the tirage, and then carefully-selected expidition liqueurs made from various aged still wines and spirits? The same answer, a few, and usually the best.

Can we then justify the use of the term `Methode Champenoise’, or are we kidding ourselves? Again it appears that Australia had better think of a new wine term. Anyway, the French are about to redouble their efforts in banning the term outside Champagne, so we might not have a choice.

And why not? Consider the Hickinbotham-patented Proreth method of producing very fine carbonic maceration wines. It is being sold around the world by Remy Martin for a fee. And the term cannot be used unless the process is carried out exactly as Stephen invented.

But that’s a side issue. What, then, is the methode Champenoise? Step One is to add yeast and sugar to a bottle of still dry white wine and re-seal. You have now set the wine up for a second fermentation, to take place inside the bottle. This has the beneficial consequences of producing the CO2 the fizzy gas and yet more alcohol.

This addition is known as the `tirage’, and the wine in which the sugar and yeast are added is called the `liqueur de tirage’. After the second fermentation the liquid will have turned quite cloudy, thanks to all the dead yeast cells and debris floating about.

Until the discovery of the riddling process, or remuage, all the Champagne drunk had to be stored nose-down in the sandy floors of cellars for several days before drinking to get the sediment to the top end, from which it could be blasted out on opening. This was usually accompanied by the loss of fluid and some haze remaining to cloud the wine. Hardly ideal.

What Madame Veuve Clicquot, La Grande Dame de Champagne, encouraged, was that by gradually twisting and turning the bottles over a period of time, so that they finished by sitting virtually upside-down in special racks or `Champagne tables’, the sediment would gather together behind the cork of the bottle. This process is called the `remuage’, and is carried out by teams of highly-skilled craftsmen known as `remeurs’, who deftly go about the business of turning and tilting Champagne bottles at amazing speed.

The next step is to remove the yeast plug, in the potentially-lethal process of disgorging. Both cork or more commonly today, the crown-seal and plug are carefully ? blasted out of the bottle, made easier these days by first snap-freezing the neck of the bottle in liquid nitrogen to make the plug more solid and less likely to break up. In modern wineries, the remuage and the disgorgement are handled mechanically.

Next, the `expedition’or `dosage’. All the bottles are by now standing upright, a little low in level and exceptionally dry – after all, they have been fermented twice. This final step before the second and last corking can determine the style of the Champagne in a single step. Even the very driest of Champagnes, which are labelled `brut’ receive a shot of sugar before they are released, except for a very rare few called `natur brut’. You can make a sweeter, or `demi-sec’ style by adding more sugar in the champagne used to top-up the bottles, which is called the `liqueur d’expedition’. Or convert it to a rose by the `tache’ stain method by putting a little red wine into the liqueur to turn the product pink.

The quality of Champagne is almost invariably affected by the amount of time that the wine spends inside the bottle between the second fermentation and disgorging, while in contact with the decaying yeast cells, which make a deposit inside the bottle called `lees’. The longer this period, the more yeast character in the wine, up to a point. Yeastiness is often likened to Vegemite and bready, doughy flavours, but in spite of this it is extremely pleasant and is the hallmark of great Champagne. French Vintage Champagnes spend a minimum of three years before disgorgement, the Non-Vintage Champagnes one year.

Next issue I’ll discuss the variants on the Methode Champenoise technique, and more to the point, how you can pick the wines made without it. Please login to post comment