If you have become accustomed to the quality and character of good Champagne, there really is no other sparkling wine that will satisfy you—and the very best of Champagne’s competitors are just as expensive as the real thing.NO OTHER VINE-GROWING region can challenge Champagne’s claim to produce the world’s greatest sparkling wine because no other area resembles this viticultural twilight zone where the vine struggles to ripen grapes each year. In order to produce a truly great sparkling wine in the classic brut sense, the grapes must be harvested with a certain balance of richness, extract, and acidity, which can be achieved only through the long-drawn-out ripening process that occurs when the vine is grown on a knife-edge between success and failure. The Champagne terroir, which includes a cold, sometimes stingy, northern climate and lime-rich chalk soil, is the key to the wine’s intrinsic superiority, yet if such an area were to be discovered today, modern wine experts would quickly dismiss it as unsuitable for viticulture, thus economically unsound for winemaking.
A SPECIFIC WINE, NOT A STYLE Contrary to beliefs in some parts of the world, Champagne is not a generic term for any sparkling wine, but the protected name of a sparkling wine produced from grapes grown within a specific, legally defined area of northern France.In Europe and various countries throughout the world, strict laws ensure that only true Champagne may be sold under the name “Champagne,” but this principle is not respected in a number of places. The most blatant misuse in the developed world is in the US, although the Americans are not entirely to blame, since the Champenois have stubbornly refused even to consider a compromise, such as “Champagne-style.” Considering this intransigence and the fact that for many years some of the most powerful Champagne houses have sold the sparkling wines they produce in South America under the name “Champaña,” which is Spanish for Champagne, the Champenois deserve the treatment they get in the US. In 1985, the term méthode champenoise was banned for all wines produced or sold in the European Economic Community (now the European Union). The term, while not a guarantee, had proved useful for separating the wheat from the chaff, since the quality of the product must warrant the cost of fermenting in bottle. Now consumers have to look for linguistic variations along the méthode traditionnelle or classique theme. In addition, there are Crémant AOCs in France, Cava DO in Spain, as well as new terms (for example Talento in Italy), which crop up all the time.
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