Our amazing spring weather was just starting to break as we enjoyed tastings of sparkling wine at Teddington and Richmond Wine Societies.
The intention was to cover the major styles of sparkling and to understand why they are different and why we might want to pay more for some rather than others. We kicked off with a comparison of two Proseccos. A decent basic DOC wine had the characteristic floral aromas, fruity taste and gentle fizz we were expecting (and not necessarily finding that exciting). In contrast the DOCG wine from Asolo, a hilly historic sub region which produces wines of far greater concentration and complexity showed what you get for paying a big more! It certainly encouraged some of us to think again of Prosecco as a high quality wine.
We left the Tank Method behind at this point and got stuck into Traditional Method wines (old language Method Champenois). Tim (and Fliss on Tuesday) tried to condense a description of the complex process of making wine that ferments a second time in bottle into a few minutes, and we then worked through a series of wines of increasing price to explore what drives quality. We discussed acidity, grape ripeness, dosage and lees ageing at some length!
A Crémant d’Alsace set the scene nicely, with citrus fruit and a slight biscuity flavour. This was followed by a comparison of Blanc de Blanc (ie Chardonnay) wines from Trento in northern Italy and Dorset, which demonstrated greater concentration of fruit and bakery aromas and flavours, and increased structure and length of finish. The English wine had spent 36 months on the lees (vs 24 for the Italian) and definitely showed greater yeast character – its low dosage made it quite ‘serious’ and we agreed it was a definitely a gastronomic wine.
We finished with a blind tasting of two top class fizzes, each with at least 7 years’ ageing on the lees. Tim felt his life’s work was complete when the vast majority of us identified the Cava. Both wines were super (as their price point really required them to be!), the Cava with spicier riper flavours, while the Champagne made from Grand Cru vineyard sites had a wonderful apple crumble flavour and creamy texture.
A fish pie at Teddington was followed by some cheese (thanks Julia!), while the Britannia provided a truffly mushroom pasta followed by some cod on ratatouille, which were, as usual, fabulous.
In July let’s hope the sunshine returns as we will be exploring Top Class Rosé.
For details of the wines and pricing please go to our Wines we have tasted page.
