Champagne wine Flashcards
Oldest Champagne house
Gosset, est 1584
Founded as still wine producer
Oldest sparkling Champagne house
Ruinart, est 1729
remuage
riddling
Cliquot
dégorgement
disgorgement
Jean-Antoine Chaptal
French chemist and statesman for whom the process of chaptalization is named, identified the relationship between sugar and fermentation in a seminal 1801 work
André François
Pharmacist, perfected measurement of the precise amount of sugar required to induce it without breaking the bottle which allowed Champagne houses to produce sparkling wines with greater confidence
Champagne production in 1800
300,000 bottles
Champagne production in 1883
36 million
vs. 300,000 in 1800
First brut Champagne
Pommery “Nature” in 1874
First official delimitation of Champagne region
1908
1911 Riots
Vignerons from the southern Aube region, who had long supplied Champagne houses with base white wine, protested after being left out of first official limits
Aube reinstated in Champagne region in what year?
1927
When did German troops enter Reims? (WWI)
1914
Otto Klaebisch
Nazi agent, nicknamed the “Weinführer”
Resided at Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin residence
Demanded huge sums of Champagne for troops
CIVC
Comité Interprofessional du Vin de Champagne
est. 1941
From the existing but limited framework of the Commission de Châlons, Count Robert-Jean de Vogüé of Moët et Chandon in 1941 organized a new, broader consortium of growers, producers and shippers to represent the Champagne industry and protect its interests in the face of Nazi occupation.
1st vintage Moët et Chandon’s “Dom Pérignon”
1921
tête de cuvée
Prestige Cuvée
bouvreux
Second crop, rarely ripens
Results after interrupted flowering from cold climate
Champagne subsoil
belemnite chalk
belemnite chalk
derived from the fossilized remains of millions of extinct cephalopods, has a high limestone content, which allows vine roots to dig deeply and is linked to increased acidity.
micraster chalk
amed for an extinct sea urchin, characterizes the valley vineyards
Dominant soil type in Aube
clay
Pinot Noir plantings
38% of region
Chardonnay plantings
31%
Meunier plantings
31%
7 authorized grapes
PN, Meunier, Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc Vrai (“true” Pinot Blanc, a white form of Pinot Noir), Arbane, Pinot Gris, and Petit Meslier
authorized pruning methods
Cordon de Royat, Chablis, Vallée de la Marne, and Guyot (double and simple).
average vine age
20 years
limit of pressing
CIVC set a limit of 102 liters of must for every 160 kg of grapes, or 2,550 liters per 4,000 kg—a marc of grapes, the amount held in a traditional Coquard basket press
number of villages authorized to grow Champagne grapes
357
grand cru villages
17
premier cru villages
42
Échelle de Crus
Until 1990, the CIVC set the price of grapes through the Échelle de Crus, a percentile system by which the villages, or crus, of the Champagne appellation are rated. Villages that achieved the maximum échelle (“scale”) of 100 were classified as grands crus; villages that achieved an échelle of 90 through 99 were classified as premier cru.
blocage and deblocage
reserve and release of wine stocks for use in future vintages
authorized by CIVC