A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHAMPAGNE

As midnight approaches on December 31st, more than a few of us will crack open a bottle or two of champagne to help toast the New Year. With a few choice facts about the bubbly stuff, you can look knowledgeable rather than just tipsy when you drain your flute. Here are a few little nuggets you can share with fellow revelers.

WHAT EXACTLY IS CHAMPAGNE?

Strictly speaking, champagne is a sparkling wine that comes from the Champagne region of northeastern France. If it's a bubbly wine from another region, it's sparkling wine, not champagne. While many people use the term "champagne" generically for any sparkling wine, the French have maintained their legal right to call their wines champagne for over a century. The Treaty of Madrid, signed in 1891, established this rule, and the Treaty of Versailles reaffirmed it.

The European Union helps protect this exclusivity now, although certain American producers can still generically use "champagne" on their labels if they were using the term before early 2006.

HOW IS CHAMPAGNE MADE?

Sparkling wines can be made in a variety of ways, but traditional champagne comes to life by a process called the methode Champenoise. Champagne starts its life like any normal wine. The grapes are harvested, pressed, and allowed to undergo a primary fermentation. The acidic results of this process are then blended and bottled with a bit of yeast and sugar so it can undergo a secondary fermentation in the bottle. (It's this secondary fermentation that gives champagne its bubbles.) This new yeast starts doing its work on the sugar, and then dies and becomes what's known as lees. The bottles are then stored horizontally so the wine can "age on lees" for 15 months or more.

After this aging, winemakers turn the bottles upside down so the lees can settle to the bottom. Once the dead yeast has settled, producers open the bottles to remove the yeast, add a bit of sugar known as dosage to determine the sweetness of the champagne, and slip a cork onto the bottle.

WHAT'S SO SPECIAL ABOUT THE CHAMPAGNE REGION?

Several factors make the chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier grapes grown in the Champagne region particularly well suited for crafting delicious wines. The northern location makes it a bit cooler than France's other wine-growing regions, which gives the grapes the proper acidity for sparkling wine production. Moreover, the porous, chalky soil of the area -- the result of large earthquakes millions of years ago -- aids in drainage.

DO I HAVE TO BUY CHAMPAGNE TO GET GOOD SPARKLING WINE?

Not at all. Although many champagnes are delightful, most of the world's wine regions make tasty sparkling wines of their own. You can find highly regarded sparkling wines from California, Spain, Italy, Australia, and other areas without shelling out big bucks for Dom Perignon.

SPEAKING OF DOM PERIGNON, WHO WAS THIS GUY?

Contrary to popular misconception, the namesake of the famous brand didn't invent champagne. But Perignon, a Benedictine monk who worked as cellar master at an abbey near Epernay during the 17th and 18th centuries, did have quite an impact on the champagne industry. In Perignon's day, sparkling wine wasn't really a sought-after beverage. In fact, the bubbles were considered to be something of a flaw, and early production methods made producing the wine somewhat dangerous. (Imprecise temperature controls could lead to fermentation starting again after the wine was in the bottle. If one bottle in a cellar exploded and had its cork shoot out, a chain reaction would start.) Perignon helped standardize production methods to avoid these explosions, and he also added two safety features to his wines: thicker glass bottles that better withstood pressure and a rope snare that helped keep corks in place.

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BRUT AND EXTRA BRUT?

You'll see these terms on champagne labels to describe how sweet the good stuff in the bottle is. As mentioned above, a bit of sugar known as dosage is added to the bottle right before its corked, and these terms describe exactly how much sugar went in. Extra brut has less than six grams of sugar per liter added, while brut contains less than 15 grams of additional sugar per liter. Several other classifications exist, but drier champagnes are more common.

WHY DO ATHLETES SPRAY EACH OTHER WITH CHAMPAGNE AFTER WINNING TITLES?

Throughout its history, champagne has been a celebratory drink that's made appearances at coronations of kings and the launching of ships. However, the bubbly-spraying throw downs that now accompany athletic victories are a much more recent development. When Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt won the grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans race in 1967, they ascended the winner's podium with a bottle of champagne in hand. Gurney looked down and saw team owner Carroll Shelby and Ford Motors CEO Henry Ford II standing with some journalists and decided to have a bit of fun. Gurney gave the bottle a shake and sprayed the crowd, and a new tradition was born.

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TOP 10 WEIRD WINE INGREDIENTS

Wine most commonly comes from grapes, but some winemakers have been pushing the boundaries of decency by making wine with much more than just fruit.

We recently revealed the weirdest ingredients that have been used in brewing beer, and that was definitely not for the faint-hearted.
And earlier this week we reported that tiger bone wine is on sale in China and then db’s senior writer, Lucy Shaw, drank some snake wine at an event in London.
But even these exotic ingredients fall well short of the weirdness factor of bear bile and the stomach churning Korean "faeces” wine…

Although not strictly ingredients nor added for flavour, some strange things may have gone through a wine prior to bottling during the fining process. The point of fining is to add something that will create an enzymatic bond with particles in the unfinished wine that cannot or are unlikely to be taken out during filtration.
In the past the rather terrifying sounding “blood powder” was used. Now egg whites, casein, gelatin and the famous isinglass (made from fish swim bladders) are more common.

Other fining agents include bentonite clay and charcoal – which is apparently particularly good at removing phenols that contribute to off-colouration and bad odours.

If people will eat naga chillies then drinking nettle wine might not seem too strange, maybe. But aficionados of nettle wine, which is popular among home winemakers, will tell you that while the plant is known for its stinging properties, those do not transfer into the wine.
Nettle wine is actually made using the small flowering buds that appear at the top of the plant. These are edible, although it is recommended that anyone picking these buds wears gloves to avoid hours of pain and itching. It is often advised that those making nettle wine infuse it with extra ingredients such as ginger root, parsley or lemon thyme as straight nettle wine “lacks character”. The good news is that you don’t need to have a glass of dock leaf wine on hand when drinking nettle wine.

Like chocolate wine, cannabis wine has become popular in the US with a number of Californian winemakers producing this potent drop. Cabernet Sauvignon is proving to be the grape variety of choice.
According to Crane Carter, president of the Napa Valley Marijuana Growers, pot wine delivers a quicker high than pot brownies, and the combination of alcohol and marijuana produces “an interesting little buzz.”

According to John Wright, a forager author, birch sap tastes almost exactly like water, “but the freshest water you have ever tasted, with just a hint of sweetness”. In Sweden, Sav winemakers produce a sparkling wine using a birch sap recipe from 1785.
Sav Sparkling is produced according to the “méthode traditionelle” and is fermented for two years in the bottle.

Sav says its sparkling wine tastes of “citrus, some sour dough bread and nuts. Weak almond scent, and much herbs. Long, slightly nutty balanced aftertaste of forest, fungus, herbs and apples.”



A Chilean wine has been created using a meteorite formed during the birth of the solar system. The Cabernet Sauvignon called Meteorito has been developed by Ian Hutcheon, an Englishman working in Chile.
The meteorite, which is believed to have crashed into the Atacama Desert in northern Chile around 6,000 years ago, is submerged in the wine during the fermentation process.
Hutcheon believes the meteorite gives the wine a “livelier taste”

As reported earlier this week in db, tiger bone tonic wine is still available in China, despite the practice being illegal in the country since 1993.
Tiger tonic wines are produced by leaving tiger bones to soak in the wine for varying lengths of time, the bones are then removed before bottling.
The wine, which in China is believed to have medicinal properties, sells for between £65-£500 a bottle depending on how long the tiger bone was in contact with the wine for.

Snake and scorpion wines are found throughout China and South East Asia and are made by infusing the reptile in question in rice wine, but they can also be infused in grain alcohol. Sometimes snakes and scorpions are combined in the same wine and lizards and geckos can be infused in wine as well.
Like tiger bone wine, snake wine is believed to have medicinal properties helping with everything from eyesight to hair loss and sexual performance. Venomous snakes are often used and are left to steep in the wine for many months.
Other parts of the snake are also used in wine including blood, bile and gall bladder.

The bear bile used in this wine has to be fresh and is obtained from live bears, a practice which has drawn much criticism from animal rights campaigners as the bears are often kept in very distressing conditions.
The bile is then mixed with the wine and Chinese cassia, jujube, orange peel and fennel seed are added, this presumably makes the wine taste better.

This is another wine thought to have medicinal benefits, with Pingbian Bear Bile Wine claiming it can “help keep the liver and gallbladder healthy, dissolve gallstones, reduce inflammation and swelling, relieve pain, and clear away heat and toxic materials. It also has certain curative effects for high blood pressure, hyperlipemia, and cardiovascular disease.”

According to traditional Chinese medicine, for deer penis to retain its beneficial properties it must – horrifically – be extracted from the deer while it is still alive.
It is claimed that prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics athletes were told not to drink deer penis wine, because it may contain certain banned substances including ephedrine. The wine is said to be an effective remedy for athletic injuries, and other benefits are thought to be enhanced sexual virility, aiding joints and making pregnant women (and their baby) stronger.

The wine sells for anything from US$12 a glass up to $450 for a bottle and is also thought, by some, to be an aphrodisiac

source http://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/

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India's Wine Production May Reach 21 Million Litres By 2018: Study

BENGALURU:  Wine production in India, though still at a nascent stage, is likely to reach 18 million litres this year and 21 million litres by 2018 from 17 million litres estimated last year, according to a study.

The year-on-year growth rate has clocked five per cent, a just concluded study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) said.

"Clocking a CAGR of about 20 per cent, wine consumption in India is likely to reach 22 million litres this year and about 37 million litres by 2018 from the level of 18 million litres as of 2014," the study said.

Major wine producers in Europe are likely to set up their manufacturing facility in the country considering it a lucrative market, said the study titled 'Wine industry in India: Case of growth versus challenges.'

Besides, wine imports are also likely to rise from this year onwards to meet the growing shortfall, it said.

"Rising youth population together with growing affluence amid middle-class, penchant for exotic tourism and other related factors are likely to push the growth of emerging wine industry in India," D.S. Rawat, Secretary General of ASSOCHAM said, while releasing the findings in Bengaluru.

"It is a misconception that wine is an 'elite drink' and is not for common public but only for city dwellers...as such there is a need to spread awareness against this notion to promote wine culture across other cities and towns in India," he said.

"This is a major challenge limiting the wine consumption in India," the study prepared by the ASSOCHAM Economic Research Bureau (AERB) said.

The number of estimated potential wine consumers in the country is placed at 26.5 million as of 2015--only about 20 per cent of India's total population of 1.25 billion

 source(http://www.ndtv.com/)

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IWFS Delhi Chapter launches with a Champagne Dinner at Le Cirque restaurant

The Delhi chapter of the International Wine and Food Society (IWFS) was inaugurated on Sunday, 2nd August with a Champagne Dinner at Le Cirque restaurant, Hotel Leela Palace. Global Brand Ambassador and Asia-PAcific Chair, IWFS, Yvonne Wallis specially flew in for the event.

Founded in London in 1933 by André Simon, the International Wine & Food Society is the oldest, independent gastronomic society in the world. More than 6,000 members are spread across three zones – Asia Pacific, Europe, Africa and the Americas.

The objectives of the Society include bringing together like-minded people who believe that an understanding of wine and food is an essential part of personal wellbeing and health. Another objective is to promote education and knowledge of the wines of the world, and a more discerning appreciation of wine.

Said Yvonne Wallis, “I have no doubt that, as with the Bombay Branch, the Delhi branch will set a very high bar indeed as it explores the mysteries and miracles of wine and food and positions India as a very special hub for IWFS.”

The evening (as the pictures attest) was grand success with a stellar line-up of Champagnes paired with a specially crafted meal by the gifted chef at Le Cirque.

source(http://www.sommelierindia.com/)

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THE INDIAN SOMMELIER CHAMPIONSHIP 2015

Images of the organizers and winners of ISC 2014

The Indian Sommelier Championship 2015, supported by Sommelier India wine magazine, is the definitive platform for all aspiring sommeliers of India to showcase their skill and take home some very coveted prizes. As the competition grows, this the eighth year will see over a 100 participants from at least a dozen states step up to the preliminary training rounds.

While the Indian wine contingent remains strong — and we the organizers wouldn’t want it any other way — foreign brands are also realising how imparting the right knowledge to these budding wine ambassadors is the steadfast way to grow the market long-term. Apart from wine, beer and spirits will continue to be a part of the competition but unlike last year, the spirits round will shift focus to cocktails and their innate sense of balance.

Taxes and duties continue to play havoc but it does little to dampen our spirits. As in the years before, the gruelling 3-day master classes will help select the chosen few from each centre who will then meet for the finals on stage in front of a jury. The results will be announced later in the day when the guests — the media and F&B fraternity and select consumers — come together over cocktails followed by a very elaborate wine dinner where the wines will clearly outweigh the food being served in each course.

The stars of the day however will be our chosen sommeliers, that wine-loving bunch who diligently work away at ensuring that our evenings progress seamlessly. It is for them that the entire event is organized so that we can all collectively celebrate the élan of sommelier.

All in all, we are gearing up for yet another unprecedented Bacchanalia, one that promises to be as heady on the learning as it shall be on the elixir that we all so love.

source(http://www.sommelierindia.com/)

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INDIAN WINES EDGE OUT FOREIGN FARE FROM TONY TABLES

Domestic vintners record 21 per cent sales growth in a year

India’s relatively nascent wine industry, warding off a lingering global economic slowdown, is on a steady high, driven by demographic changes and a growing affluent class.

Wine sales in India rose by 21 per cent from 95 lakh litres in 2013-14 to 1.15 crore litres in 2014-15, according to the all India wine producers association.

Studies by Vinexpo, another leading wine and spirits industry body, has forecast that by 2017 wine sales will grow by 73.5 per cent, translating to an annual consumption of 2.4 million cases.

A number of Indian vintners are going all out to woo tipplers by adopting sophisticated wine making processes, flying in renowned winemakers and using the best quality fruits.

Weathering meltdown of the late 2000s, which led to the crumbling of India’s largest wine company Chateau Indage in 2010, vintners like Nashik’s Sula Vineyard and Grover Zampa Vineyard have found a strong foothold not just on home turf but also overseas.

Says Neeraj Agarwal, executive vice president, Sula Vineyards, “Indians are typically whisky and beer drinkers, but we are now seeing a higher level of sophistication among well-travelled Indian consumers who are striving to catch up with the west.”

He adds: “Besides urbanisation, the main driver of growth in consumption of wines is the rising number of women drinkers. The latter will constitute a huge market for us in the future.” 

“The Indian market is growing at a healthy 20 per cent each year. Thanks to the health benefits of wine and a young population ready to experiment with their drinks, we can expect strong growth in the next five years,” says Ajoy Shaw, chief winemaker, Sula Vineyards.

Harish Bijoor, brand expert and chief executive officer (CEO), Harish Bijoor Consults, says: “The increasing in wine consumption in any country reflects its growing GDP. There is a direct co-relation between the two, signifying a cultural shift. Because of the growing IT-Ites sector, there is more money in the hands of people. Their changing eating out habits are driving the wine industry. Moreover, wine is regarded as the healthiest among all liquor options.”

While Sula Vineyards has about 60 per cent of the market share in the country, Grover Zampa Vineyards enjoys 15 per cent of the pie.

All India wine producers association president Shivaji Ahir recently said the availability of cheaper wines is one of the factors behind rising consumption.

Sumedh Singh Mandla, chief executive officer, Grover Zampa Vineyards, agrees: “The entry-level segment of wine is witnessing an uptick in demand. We never ventured into the category under Rs 500 until recently. But we have now introduced some cheaper wines mainly to boost distribution across India. But our main priority remains the Rs 500-plus category.”

Players like Goa’s Pinsome Wine Industries produces wines that are as cheap as Rs 100 a bottle. The company has a significant market share in the state.

In the elite segment, wines like Sula’s Riesling, Dindori Reserve Shiraz, Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Brut and Grover Zampa’s Grover La’ Reserve and Chene Grand Reserve — which are priced between Rs 750 and Rs 1,850 – are the most popular.

In the premium segment, Sula’s Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Shiraz and Sauvignon Blanc are in the Rs 500 to Rs 750 range.

Red wine accounts for more than 60 per cent of the consumption in India. This segment is expected to grow by 71.6 per cent between 2013 and 2017, according to Vinexpo.

Agarwal says that rosé, too, is fast emerging as a go-to drink for warm days and nights. The consumption of white wine is also expected to grow by a healthy 71 per cent.

Indian wines have put foreign exports in the shade in the domestic market. Indian producers have 80 per cent of the market share. The consumption of French wines has fallen by more than 20 per cent over the past year.

Among imported wines, Australian wines have significantly gained ground with brands like Jacob’s Creek, Yellow Tail and Hardy’s. 

“Indian wines are unique in every way possible. India is the only wine producing country in the northern hemisphere that has a winter harvest. The terroir (soil and climate) in Nashik in particular gives Indian wines a distinct taste and bouquet. In fact, the uniqueness of Indian wine has made Sula a popular choice in our export markets,” says Agarwal.

Mandla of Grover Zampa says their products enjoy popularity not just in India, but overseas as well. The company exports to 21 countries, including France, Japan, the UK and New Zealand. 

But the industry has its share of challenges. Being categorised under the liquor segment poses many problems. Moreover, the taboo attached to liquor still exists in certain sections of Indian society.

Says Joseph Pinto, managing partner, Pinsons Wine Industries, Goa, “Marketing the product within the country itself is riddled with difficutlties as many of our states are ‘dry’ states.”

Mandla points to another issue. “Different states have different regulations and impose different duties. Say, if we a product is available for Rs 750 in one state, it would be available for Rs 2,500 in another state. There is no uniformity in policies.”

“There is also a situation where if we want to sell wines produced in Maharashtra in Karnataka, there would be no law for it. Also, In Taml Nadu, for example, we do not have a provision to sell domestically produced wines at all,” adds Mandla.

Source(http://www.mydigitalfc.com/)

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