Bubble to bubble... champagne or sparkling wine? Do we already know what we will toast with on the last or first day of the year?
The time is approaching when it reigns on our tables champagnes and sparkling wines. Do we know what the difference is between sparkling wine and champagne? Despite the fact that sparkling wine let's just say it champagne, that's not correct. Champagne is produced only in France and comes from of the Champagne region. This is how they produce here sparkling wine and there are not a few of them.
They also differ in the method or process of production. At classical procedure the second alcoholic fermentation takes place in the bottle. An initial liqueur is added to the base wine, which contains wine concentrate, yeast and sugar. The bottles are then closed with a crown stopper, which he introduced into the process monk Dom Pierre Pérignon in the 17th century. They direct by shaking sediments, which are produced during the second alcoholic fermentation, into the neck of the bottle against the cork. They open the bottles and remove the sediment, add the lost wine and as usual sweetened liqueur, with which they affect the sugar content in sparkling wine.
At methods charm the process from the second alcoholic fermentation takes place in a large steel high-pressure tank. Under conditions of overpressure, the yeasts are first removed by filtration and the wine is then bottled. Despite the fact that most people consider sparkling wine to be a beginner of the monk Dom Pérignon, not so. He introduced many innovations into the process and improved the sparkling wine. The oldest producers of sparkling wine Blanquette de Limoux they were the Benedictine monks of Saint Hilaire near Carcassonne in the distant year 1531. At that time, manufacturers used the so-called méthode rurale. The credit for sparkling wine as we know it today goes to an Englishman To Christopher Merret, which two hundred years later documented and defined méthode champenoise, which remains unchanged to this day. In the 19th century, the production of champagne and sparkling wines increased dramatically. The sparkling wine was no longer mere the drink of the aristocracy and monks. Everyone else could also participate.
The French were left with the use of the name champagne, while other manufacturers of bubbles use names such as sparkling wine, spumante, cava, Sect, crémant ... Trends in the way of drinking sparkling wine change from year to year. If our grandparents could not imagine drinking sparkling wine or champagne in any other way than from wide glasses stacked in a pyramid, today it is quite different, because sparkling wine is offered mostly in narrow glasses, where the bubble dance is longer. The sparkling wine is served chilled to approximately eight degrees Celsius. Bubble dance we cannot observe it only with bad wine or in poorly washed glasses, because then they are virtually absent. We still use wide glasses today, but only if we want to enjoy with the nose first, which is recommended for (semi)sweet sparkling wines. Real sparkling wine it smells fresh and so is its taste. The bubbles are lively in the glass and in the mouth. In the best champagnes, the foam is creamy and stays on the surface for up to twenty seconds, and the bubbles sparkle in the glass for up to twenty minutes.
Slovenia has a very varied and high-quality selection of sparkling wines. We have highlighted some of them in the hope of finding as many reasons as possible for a glass of good sparkling wine, which will make it easier to look forward to life and the new year.
