Champagne Tasting

Champagne Tasting- 2013

(Domestic Sparkling Wine) 

Every January we host a Champagne Tasting at our house.  I know, it is not proper to call it Champagne (true Champagne only comes from France) but, come on, that is what most of us call it so that is  how we are going to refer to it in this posting.  Our invitations say to bring a Domestic Sparkling Wine and let’s face it, domestic pretty much means California right, because what else is there?   We have someone not involved with the tasting quickly cover the bottles as people arrive.  This year we used aluminum foil and it works great. Then we try to get the bottles equally chilled and while the bottles are coming to an equal temperature we offer the guests (tasters) appetizers and a beer or glass of wine to get their taste buds working. Nowadays we have some people that ask for water and I am not too hard on them.  I of course know that I am not going anywhere else the rest of the day so I am ready to party.  We try to start around 1 or 2 because Champagne after all is better earlier in the day.

About two hours prior to the start of the Tasting I remember that I have not put together any Evaluation Forms so I quickly crank something out.  The forms are generally not too tricky.  I list the tastes, one through however many we pour, maybe 10 or 11, and you record your impressions, give them a rating on a scale of 10, and then hopefully give them a ranking of all the Champagnes tasted (your favorite down to your least favorite).  Of course the ranking can be quite difficult because sometimes you do not clearly remember what you drank four or five tastes earlier. 

One of the key requirements of a successful Champagne Tasting event is good music at a listenable level for most of us that really enjoy the music but not too loud for those that really don’t care or just don’t get it.  A friend of mine and I usually introduce our new compilation CD on this day which is a broad mix of Folk, Rock and Roll, Americana and Pop dating from 1968 to present day.  We have usually worked for weeks narrowing down the CD to 16 songs (8 from each) with artist as varied as Glenn Campbell, to Adele, but almost always with a dose of one of our favorites (Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, Van Morrison, and so on).  The goal is to find tunes that sound good today and will sound good 10 years from now. So again, the music is important.

Over the years I have assembled quite a few champagne glasses. I like it that everyone is able to drink from a new glass for every taste.  It amazes me that you can find decent champagne glasses for as little as a $1.00.  Every year World Market has a sale on champagne glasses the week before New Years and that is my usual store but Ikea has some pretty good deals also.  Unfortunately the glasses available are rarely the exact same shape year after year so we have quite an assortment. At his point I certainly have enough glasses for a toast with a group of maybe 125 people.  But even this year at the end of the day there were only 3 glasses not touched.  The instructions to the pourer is that the same person gets the same style of glasses for each of their tastes but that does not always work out.

The first bottle is opened (without looking at the cork) and the bottle is marked #1.  Each of the participants are provided a glass and encouraged to make notes.  There are usually lots of comments initially and definitely lots of oohs and aahs. Subsequent bottles are opened and poured and marked with maybe 5-7 minutes between each pour.  This year I think we had maybe 10-11 different tastes.  There have been years when two participants have brought the same wine and I usually have a few extra bottles available but usually 10-11 is enough.  I think it is not uncommon for someone to forget to record their notes on a specific taste.  I know I did this this year. 

 

Nearly all the champagnes were good.  There was one that was voted a stinker by all of us and it was not a function of one person saying something bad and everyone jumping on the bandwagon.  It truly was below all the others.  What is typical though is there is rarely a single taste that stands way above the others.  Our group probably represents the common champagne drinker or maybe just a notch more sophisticated than the average drinker.  The champagnes tasted included the standard batch of champagnes that you see in the grocery store.  Represented were Domaine Carneros, Roderer, Mumm, Domaine Chandon,  Scharffenberger,   Gloria Ferrer and Piper Sonoma.  There was also a sparkling wine from New Mexico winery (yes there is champagne made outside of California) named Gruet.  Then there were two non domestic sparkling wines, one of them a Piper Heidsieck from France and the other a Prosecco from Italy. 

The champagne with the most first place votes was the Piper Sonoma but it was certainly was not a landslide.  Piper Sonoma is made in Hopland, CA  at a contract facility and is one of lower priced champagnes in the group.  It received more first place votes than the Piper-Heidsieck, (parent company of Piper Sonoma) made in France and priced at 2 to 3 times the price.  But all the champagnes were good with the one exception.  The Prosecco from Italy stood out as it was a bit sweeter than the others and the New Mexico champagne tasted just like the California version.  This year nobody submitted a Korbel into the tasting but I can tell you when we have included Korbel before it has fared well.

For those of you that have tasted champagnes side by side at one of the tasting rooms (Domaine Carneros, Mumm, Chandon) you are normally not tasting more than three at a time and you really get to study the color and bubbles and compare tastes.  This method might give you a little better results but when you are tasting 10 or 11 versions it can be a little difficult to pull off. 

So I guess the point I am trying to make is that if you stick with one of the premium brands of champagne, usually priced anywhere from $10.00 to $24.00 you are going to be pretty safe.  What the champagne tasting is really about is getting together and chatting with friends with good music while drinking some refreshing wine.  But that does not mean we won’t go through the whole process of organizing the blind tasting event because that is fun also.  And it is always a bonus when the particular wine or champagne you brought is the favorite of the group.