160 full-color and duotone illustrations 160 pages • 9 x 11" Paper over board ISBN 0-7892-0502-5 • $29.95

Champagne. No other wine is as celebrated or as celebratory. Its golden bubbles ascend through our most treasured memories. Surprisingly, this legendary drink has not received the same meticulous study as the other great wines of France—until now.

In this comprehensive volume, Eric Glatre, one of France's most revered "noses," combines an overview of the effervescent wine's fascinating history—from Roman times to the present—with specific and detailed information about its production, from planting the vines to popping the cork. He also presents his personal selection of the one hundred most exceptional champagnes currently available, complete with full-color reproductions of their labels and expert, evocative tasting notes.

An indispensable handbook, the Champagne Guide teaches the reader how to appreciate champagne, how to drink it, and perhaps most important, how to buy it. A list of all the producers represented in the book provides the most up-to-date information about the great Champagne houses and cooperatives. Armed with Glatre's Champagne Guide, novices and aficionados alike will be well placed to celebrate special occasions far into the new millennium.

A native of Champagne, Eric Glatre is France's leading authority on the effervescent wine. Director of a series of books on wine for Editions Stock, he is also renowned for his lively commentaries on wine and food, both in the press and on the radio. He lives in Epernay in Champagne.


From Chapter Five, "Correct Champagne Usage: A Lot of Details All for the Love of Bubbles"

Buying, Shipping, and Storage

Unlike other great wines, champagne does not mellow with age. Having already spent some years in the cellar, it is ready for drinking when you buy it. You can, however, keep it in the cellar for another four of five years should you wish to (eight to ten years for vintage champagne), provided it is stored horizontally (to prevent the cork from drying out). The correct storage conditions are important. The cellar should be free of drafts and vibrations and shielded from natural light. It should be dark and cool with a constant temperature (ideally 50-53.6°F [10-12°C]) and approximately 80 percent humidity.

Champagne is often bought on impulse either as a gift or to take along to a dinner party. The important thing is to buy from a supplier who knows how to rotate his stocks. The high temperatures and ultraviolet light found in numerous display cases can have disastrous effects on champagne left there for any length of time.

Whenever possible it is best not to drink champagne on the same day you bought it but to let it rest for a few days. If you must drive for several hours with champagne in the car, you should then leave it alone for ten days in a cool, dark place where the temperature is constant at 50-53.6°F (10-12°C). (Of course, very few of us have the facilities to do this; nor indeed do a good many commercial outlets.) The lower the storage temperature, the slower the ripening of the wine. A champagne that has never left the coolness of its native cellars will seem much longer than one stored at higher temperatures.

As with all wines, extreme changes in temperature are the most lethal. Champagne ripens better in magnums than in standard bottles, and less well in half bottles. It should never be stored in the refrigerator, which tires the wine. Once a bottle has been uncorked, it can be resealed and kept in the refrigerator for two to three days at most, although even that would be a shame in the case of a great champagne that has aged for some years. The myth that you can keep an open bottle by inserting a silver spoon into its neck is just that—a myth. It's better to use a special stopper that will give you a few more hours' grace.

Shortly before drinking champagne, bring the bottle up from the cellar where it was lying in the darkness.

Chilling, Choice of Glass, Uncorking, and Serving

Serving champagne is somewhat of a ceremony in itself and worthy of a few preparations.

First, make sure the wine is at the ideal drinking temperature. Champagne releases its finest aromas at temperatures between 46.4 and 50°F (8 and 10°C). To chill champagne in a manner that respects the quality of the wine and keeps it at the right temperature, place the bottle in a champagne bucket half filled with water and ice cubes for about twenty minutes.

If you do not have a champagne bucket, place the bottle in the least cold part of the refrigerator (three hours will be enough to achieve the ideal temperature). Never put the bottle in the freezer. In just a few minutes you'll destroy the sparkle that has required painstaking care and many years of cellaring to create. Excessive cold also spoils the taste.

Next, prepare the glasses in which you plan to serve the champagne. Choice of glass is not nearly as futile as you might think, but it raises all sorts of issues, aesthetic, practical, and also to a certain extent technical.

Choose glasses that, like champagne itself, are rare and delicate, and free of any color or decoration. Be utterly uncompromising in your choice. Those widebrimmed glasses that were a wedding present or a bequest, however attractive they may be, are completely useless when it comes to retaining aromas. Their wide surface area brings the wine into contact with the air and allows all the sparkle to escape. Put them away or get rid of them altogether. The most famous example of this type of glass, currently in the possession of the Antique Porcelain Company in New York, is said to have been modeled on Marie-Antoinette's breast. One can admire its formal perfection, but we have to recognize that it makes a hopeless champagne glass.

The champagne flute is de rigueur, the only glass ideally suited to champagne: deep enough to allow the waltzing bubbles to brush against its sides and spread out into a fine cordon on the surface; slim enough to give the aromas somewhere to hide, not disappear, before making subtle overtures to your sense of smell. Now if the flute were made of crystal, that would be sheer bliss.

The flute in fact is much older than the goblet. Already much vaunted in the Gallo-Roman period, it became renowned for its beauty in the seventeenth century in the skillful hands of Venetian glassblowers from the isle of Murano, and later in the hands of their English counterparts in the Victorian era. We can trace its history through the works of such great masters as Velásquez, Cézanne, Braque, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Crystal flutes today are designed to be as aesthetically pleasing as they are functional.

The appearance of the so-called modern, tulip-shaped flute marked the beginning of a new phase of soberness and simplicity. Of purer design, this new flute gives the wine it holds a more typically "champagne" look. Its somewhat elongated egg-shaped curves first saw the light of day at the end of World War II and became popular toward the end of the 1950s. The opening is wide enough to release the aromas but narrow enough to concentrate the bouquet. Over the years the stem has become more elongated and refined, imparting a thinner, more elegant outline to the flute.

It should be noted that the bubbles, however magical, are inclined to be capricious. Depending on the type and age of the champagne, they can vary in quantity as well as finesse. They may also be reduced, even flattened altogether, by any traces of detergent remaining on the sides of the flute or any strong odor such as furniture polish used to wax the glass cabinet. If so, replace the flute immediately.

You are now ready to commence opening the bottle. By far the most elegant way to do this is without removing the bottle from the ice bucket. Holding the bottle with one hand, untwist the eyelet of the wire muzzle with the other and separate the strands that hold the cork in place. Remove the muzzle together with the foil wrapping. Tip the bottle slightly, then gently turn it with your right hand, holding the cork with your left. The cork will gradually ease out, slowly releasing the carbon dioxide and giving a little sigh as it does so. This is your reward. To prevent the mousse from gushing out with a vengeance when the cork is removed, try not to shake the bottle at any point in the proceedings. If you follow these few simple rules, you'll find that opening a bottle of champagne is child's play.

Once the cork is out, make sure there's no smell. Sometimes a defective cork can give the wine a bad taste. In this unlikely (only 0.5 to 1 percent of all sales) the vendor will replace the bottle. Now start to serve the champagne. Take the bottle out of the ice bucket, wipe it delicately with a table napkin, not forgetting the rim of the opening, and pour yourself a smidgen to taste. Then slowly pour just a bit into each flute before filling each one two-thirds full.