It’s always time for bubbly! Champagne Day

If you ask me, any day is a good time for bubbly. However, today October 22 is the official National Champagne Day in the US, in France, we celebrate Champagne mostly on New Year’s Eve. so I’ll toast to that! I also toast to the French savoir-faire for creating such refined exquisite bubbly that can only be produced in the region of Champagne, France under strict appellation controllée.

The word Champagne can only be printed on the bottle if it was grown and harvested in the region of Champagne, France following strict rules and protocol. “French Champagne is a French sparkling wine. The term Champagne comes from its region where it is produced in “Champagne. It is illegal to label any product Champagne unless it came from the Champagne wine region of France and is produced under the rules of the appellation.”

Making champagne calls for very specific vineyard practices and sourcing of grapes exclusively from designated places followed by specific grape-pressing methods and secondary fermentation of the wine in the bottle to cause carbonation. It was the English scientist Christopher Merret who experimented with adding sugar to a finished wine to create a second fermentation, six years before Dom Pérignon, a process which is now called méthode traditionnelle, formerly known as Méthode Champenoise, in 1662.

There are more than one hundred Champagne houses and 19,000 smaller vignerons (vine-growing producers) in Champagne. These companies manage some 32,000 hectares of vineyards in the region. (There is American champagne called Kirkland Signature Champagne which is actually produced in the Grand Cru village of Verzenay, France in the Champagne region by Manuel Janisson at Maison MJ, imported by DC Flynt MW Domaines & Estates.)

Some favorite French Champagne include Dom Pérignon, Louis Roederer Cristal Brut, Veuve Clicquot, Moet & Chandon, or Laurent Perrier to name a few good classic champagnes.