Champagne and glass — the key ingredient is the glass

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Life for champagne usually begins in a wooden barrel as a still wine.

The fermented juice turns into alcohol by way of a chemical process called malolactic fermentation. A softening of acid makes the wine palatable.

“Methode champenoise” is the legal term placed on U.S. wine labels to show it has been made in the traditional champagne manner. Only champagne made in France’s Champagne region can be called champagne. So as not to confuse anyone, all champagne is sparkling wine, but not all sparkling wine is champagne.

Only three grapes (Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay), two red grapes and one white, are allowed into champagne. All three grapes are related. Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay are the siblings of Pinot Noir.

Traditional winemaking properties in Champagne are called Houses. Currently, 260 Champagne houses own just 12 percent of French Champagne vineyards. The rest are independent owners. How many independent growers are there? Try 19,000. They own 88 percent of vineyards, with some dating back more than 300 years. The 260 Houses sell 71 percent of all champagne made in the region. The rest is made by cooperatives or small batch-making locals and consumed locally.

Champagne grapes are first made into wine. To achieve the bubbles, the still wine is put into a bottle, and yeast is added. The wines are aged at least until the second January after the harvest. Vintage champagne is all from the same year and cannot be released until after the third January of that harvest. Champagne is made in the same bottle you will buy. No corking is done until shipment, thus lessening any cork taint.

Bottle caps are used during bubble-action time, except with Bollinger, who prefers a cork. As the sparkling, bubbly wine becomes champagne, each maker pops the cap off and adds a small dose of wine/sugar mix. Champagne becomes sweet, sweetest or remains a dry style at this time.

During this bubble-action process, which can take up to five years, champagne stays in the same bottle from start to the time it’s bought. It is the only wine made in the world that spends all its time aging in a glass bottle before going to market.

Glass and champagne have a “hand-and-glove” relationship. Even large format bottles of magnum size and larger go through the same process. Champagne aged in those large bottles will taste better than in the smaller ones. It’s all about aging inside glass and ullage.

Ullage is the air space between a cork and the wine inside a full bottle of wine. Large bottles have about the same air space as a regular .750-milliliter bottle, and, because of this, they tend to age slower with better results.

CHAMPAGNE’S ROYAL BOTTLE NAMES AND SIZES 

SIZE                                             EQUIVALENT
Split                              187 milliliters, about 1 ½ glasses      
Half bottle                    375 milliliters, about 2 ½ glasses
Bottle                            750 milliliters, about 5 glasses
Magnum                      Two bottles, about 10 glasses
Jeroboam                    Four bottles, about 20 glasses
Methuselah                 Eight Bottles, about 40 glasses
Salmanazar                  Case of 12 bottles, about 60 glasses
Balthazar                      16 bottles, about 80 glasses
Nebuchadnezzar        20 bottles, about 100 glasses