Champagne is a perfect mix

Oct 2 2009 by Helen Savage, The Journal

LOOK very carefully at the picture of me picking grapes in Champagne a few years ago, and you’ll see that there are green and black berries on the same vine.

This curious plant is an accident: both Pinot Noir and Chardonnay cuttings were accidentally grafted onto the same rootstock. It wasn’t part of a cunning plan to make rosé by blending the fruit of red and white varieties; each was picked separately – a week or two apart.

But pink champagne, unlike any European still table wine, is usually made by blending red and white wines together.

The fizz of champagne is then created by fermenting a wine for a second time in the confines of a bottle so that all the carbon dioxide produced by the fermentation remains trapped, dissolved in the liquid.

In addition, the interaction of the wine with the yeast cells creates its distinctively biscuity or toasty aroma. This takes time – at least 15 months, but usually two or three years – and sometimes much longer.

And because pink wine that has undergone a couple of years’ ageing in the bottle will have begun to turn brown, some producers add a tiny bit more red wine to freshen the colour, just before the wine is finally corked.

The alternative way to make pink champagne is to start with a rosé base wine. Fizz made in this way often tastes richer, fruitier and, perhaps, just a little bitter at the end -– the effect of tannins leached from black grapes.

Pink champagnes made by blending a little red into a white wine tend to smell and taste more like a white wine; although the effect of ageing a wine in contact with the yeast cells helps to integrate the flavours.

Generally speaking, pink fizz is, however, sold a little younger than the finest white champagnes in order to preserve as much of the fruity flavour of the fresh grapes as possible.

Blended pink champagnes are relatively cheap and easy to produce. A pink wine that begins life as a true rosé is trickier to handle. Roughly two-thirds of all white champagne is made from black grapes (Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier), but because the grapes are pressed gently and immediately, the colour has no time to stain the clear juice.