Dear friend,
During the year I often answer a question, both from professionals and enthusiasts: “why don’t you produce a sparkling wine?”. Wine – I will never tire of saying it – is a cultural product. The risk, today that consumption has changed a lot and our bond with wine is less solid than it once was, is that this becomes more of a merely commercial product than a product of the culture of a territory.
I have always been a lover of sparkling wines, especially Champagne. This is why I visited that beautiful area several times: I wanted to understand how it was produced and what characteristics a sparkling wine had to have to reach that level of quality and pleasantness.
A photo from my 2014 trip to Champagne
My first trip dates back to 2009. On that occasion I visited several maisons, mostly large companies where the oenological approach was more marked than the viticultural one. I remember some of the many questions I asked during each visit but in the end I returned home with very few answers. The second trip, in 2014, was more profitable: before leaving I met some small producers with a philosophy closer to mine (biodynamic agriculture, natural winemaking, etc.). The companions of that beautiful trip were sommeliers and owners of important establishments in Rome, it was thanks to them that we were able to visit even important realities, and the attention that was given to us during the visits was very professional. We visited twenty-two companies among small artisans and large Champagne brands, and we always managed to taste samples from the tank or barrel. There I began to understand better.
I carefully observed the Champagne countryside, from the “Montagne de Reims” to the “Côte des Blancs”, the vineyards and more. The approach to viticulture was explained to me in detail, speaking with several winemakers I understood what they are looking for, what are the most common problems and how to work in managing the “reserve” wine. After these two trips I returned to Champagne other times, and at the same time I visited other areas where sparkling wines are produced such as Franciacorta and the province of Trento. This is how I came to a very personal conclusion: a sparkling wine makes sense to exist only in a territory where olive trees do not grow.
If you want to produce a quality sparkling wine, and therefore also a local one, it can only be born in a place characterized by a continental climate, not a Mediterranean one. In places like Champagne the wines are tense, savoury and almost lacking in aromas, with the refermentation in the bottle and the permanence on the yeasts these are enriched with taste and aromas that are almost never present in the original wine. A wine produced in a Mediterranean context is already rich in fragrances and aromas, it does not require further processing to expand and enhance its complexity, which could actually make it not very elegant. Today many producers in my region have tried their hand at producing sparkling wines with interesting results. Wines that I cannot see as products born to enhance a path of research on the territory, but rather to satisfy commercial needs.
I believe that today there are more and more wines OF the territory, and that at the same time it is increasingly difficult to distinguish and identify true wines OF THE TERRITORY. This too, I believe, is one of the causes that contribute to the contemporary wine crisis.
See you soon!
Pierpaolo Messina