Sparkling Wines and Champagne: 3. Champange in France; Sparkling Wine Around The World

Posted by on Jan 5, 2012 in Champagne/Sparkling Wines, Wine Store Blog | 0 comments

Sparkling Wines and Champagne: 3. Champange in France; Sparkling Wine Around The World

If you are just join­ing us, wel­come to the three-part Sparkling Wine and Cham­pagne blog series. This is the third blog in the series. If you missed the first blog on 1. The Ori­gins Of Cham­pagne, or the sec­ond blog on 2. How Cham­pagne Is Made, then be sure to check them out. Now, onto the dif­fer­ent types of sparkling wine found not only in France, but around the world. Vin­tage Champagne In the Cham­pagne region the wines are sep­a­rated into the non-vintage and Vin­tage...

Read More

Sparkling Wines and Champagne: 2. How to Make Champagne

Posted by on Dec 31, 2011 in Champagne/Sparkling Wines, Wine Store Blog | 0 comments

Sparkling Wines and Champagne: 2. How to Make Champagne

If you’re just join­ing us, wel­come to the three-part blog series, Sparkling Wine and Cham­pagne; if you missed the first part, 1. The Ori­gins of Cham­pagne, be sure to check that out. With regards to the approaches used today for mak­ing sparkling wine, there are three meth­ods: the tra­di­tional, trans­fer, and tank meth­ods. In this blog we’ll take a quick look at each method and explore the dif­fer­ences between the three. Tra­di­tional: • The first step is to cre­ate a vari­ety of...

Read More

Sparkling Wines and Champagne: 1. The Origins Of Champagne

Posted by on Dec 26, 2011 in Champagne/Sparkling Wines, Featured, Wine Store Blog | 0 comments

Sparkling Wines and Champagne: 1. The Origins Of Champagne

Cham­pagne, Sparkling Wine… …Bub­bly. Cham­pers. Fizz. Cham­panky. Car­bon­ated wine has many dif­fer­ent names, but inevitably shows up at any party indi­cat­ing the same thing: cel­e­bra­tion. It is the def­i­n­i­tional drink to ring in some form of good news or cheer. Sparkling wine is highly car­bon­ated and full of a fun, rich his­tory. When you hear that loud ‘pop’ and a bul­bous wine cork goes fly­ing across the room on Year Years, chances are it came from a bot­tle of...

Read More

Ice Wines 2: How Ice Wine Is Made

Posted by on Dec 18, 2011 in Champagne/Sparkling Wines, Ice Wine, Wine Store Blog | 0 comments

Ice Wines 2: How Ice Wine Is Made

Wel­come to the sec­ond post in our three-part blog series on ice wine. Now that we know where ice wine comes from, we should fig­ure out how, exactly, ice wine is made. It is cer­tainly more com­pli­cated than sim­ply for­get­ting grapes out in the win­ter­time; it requires care­ful prepa­ra­tion under spe­cific con­di­tions. Let’s take a look at them. First, the grapes must be picked from the vine when they are nat­u­rally frozen, and then taken to the press in a con­tin­u­ous process...

Read More

Wine And Food Pairings For Wines From The Loire Valley

Posted by on Nov 8, 2011 in Loire Valley Wines, Wine Store Blog | 0 comments

Wine And Food Pairings For Wines From The Loire Valley

The Loire Val­ley makes some of the best wines one earth. Below is a quick list of great food pair­ings that com­ple­ment the wines from each sub-region of the Loire Valley. Cen­tral Vine­yards (Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume) In the Cen­tral Vine­yards the two main Vine­yards are Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume which are well known for their Sauvi­gnon Blanc. Sauvi­gnon Blanc is a delec­table wine which works extremely well when paired with Crot­tin de Chav­i­g­nol (bet­ter known as goat cheese. ) Try baked...

Read More

Wines and the Sub regions of The Loire Valley

Posted by on Nov 8, 2011 in Loire Valley Wines, Wine Store Blog | 0 comments

Wines and the Sub regions of The Loire Valley

Unlike other French regions, the Loire Val­ley does not have regional AC clas­si­fi­ca­tions. They do, how­ever, have Vin de Pays clas­si­fi­ca­tion (Vin de Pays du Val de Loire) which cov­ers the entire region. Vin de Pays is one step up from table wine and it is usu­ally seen as sin­gle vari­etals on the label such as; Sauvi­gnon Blanc or Chenin Blanc. These types of wines will def­i­nitely have some typ­i­cal flavours of Loire such as fresh­ness, light body with sim­ple fruit. If you are a...

Read More