Ah, Champagne! The very name conjures up images of glitzy parties full of stars and starlets raising toasts to their glamour and success! No proper New Year's Eve celebration could go on without a bottle of bubbly to imbibe as the Auld Lang Syne's plaintive strains play, and the room sways while the bells toll midnight! So, just what is this marvellous drink? Champagne is a sparkling wine named after the region of France it originated in, and that produces it to this day. In fact, to even bear the name Champagne on the label, the spirit is required to be made by a long, complicated process that dictates every step from grape to the glass, and that process must take place in that province, and with its fruits alone! Otherwise, it's just sparkling wine.
There are just seven varieties of grapes that can be used to make Champagne. These days most bottles are made from three main grapes, Meunier, Pinot Noir, and Chardonnay. There are many brands available in the marketplace, from fairly inexpensive to those requiring a major investment like Dom Perignon, a name long associated with the highest quality and concordant pricing, the Rolls Royce of Champagnes! Produced by the August Champagne house Moët & Chandon using a mix of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes, Dom Perignon serves as their prestige label and is by far the most celebrated vintage champagne the world knows.
No other brand of Champagne can be considered to be as iconic as Dom Perignon, almost without fail it is the first choice for the rich and famous, including royalty! The ill-fated Shah of Iran famously laid in bottles of the 1959 vintage to mark the Persian Empire's 2,500-year celebration. The British Royal Family chose the 1961 vintage for the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, that being the year of her birth.
The exact number of bottles produced for each vintage is a strictly kept secret, but educated guesses place it around 5 million. The term vintage applies to the year the grapes were grown, and champagnes like Dom Perignon are given the title vintage champagne because they allow only grapes from that year. This strict policy ensures that every vintage of their champagne is strictly unique, taking on the flavours and qualities of the grapes grown under each year's subtly different conditions.
In the case of years that suffer a poor-quality harvest due to undesirable weather conditions, there will be no bottles of Dom Perignon produced at all! This is to uphold and maintain the brand's exceptional high quality, only vintages that are guaranteed to age well for twenty years are ever released. This usually means that an average of around six vintages will appear over the course of 10 years.
Although the same types of grapes, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, are used to make every bottle, the final results are never precisely identical, no two vintages ever taste exactly alike. Experts say that well-aged Dom Perignon embodies a pleasing coffee-and-fresh-toast-bouquet, making it one of the most unusual and sought-after scents in Champagne.
You can enjoy a glass of champagne any time, but a glass of sumptuous Dom Pérignon must be savoured.
