One of the most asked questions I get every year is: ”What is your favorite wine to drink overall?” This is a difficult question to answer as each wine has its own characters that are good in different situations. Am I drinking the wine with a certain food or without food? Is it hot outside or cold outside? Am I travelling which changes my options and maybe in an area with a specialty? Lots to consider….

While working in Germany years ago I had the most memorable wine ever, and that was an Ice Wine that I found hidden in a dark corner of the winery I was working for. I brought it to Christmas dinner at a friend’s house and it was fantastic tasting and even better is that I could share this treasure. Then there was a Moscatel from near Lisbon, Portugal that was very memorable that was sweet but lots of fruit aromas and flavors. A more local wine that made a huge impression was one of the first wines I tasted made by the first Winemaker for Roche Winery (Steve MacRostie), and it was his 1990 Chardonnay that he made for his own brand. It made me really like Chardonnay!

Ok, those were favorites at specific times, but if I were to choose one type of wine as my favorite, it would be sparkling wine! Before I started working for Roche Winery back in 1991, I had worked for three sparkling wine wineries doing internships, one in Sonoma (Gloria Ferrer) one in Napa (Domaine Carneros), and one in the Rheingau of Germany (Sektkellerei Bardong), and I loved the end products of each winery. Bubbles are fun and tasty, and not only for special occasions, and when I get the chance to have a glass of wine at Roche, I mostly ask for a glass of the sparkling Brut Rose. Many people ask how it is made and it is actually fairly simple on a basic level.

We have been making a Methode Champenoise sparkling wine since 2020 and we have been making one yearly since then because of its popularity. Methode Champenoise is the traditional method to make Champagne (sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France – Only from there!), and this method requires you to ferment in a bottle and the wine remains in that same bottle until someone drinks it or smashes it on a boat. The first thing we do is pick the grapes at a relatively low sugar level of 18 to 19 Brix (percent sugar), press the grapes to a tank without pressing too hard (to prevent bitterness from getting extracted from the skins) and then ferment the wine in a tank to dryness. The lower picking sugar gives you an alcohol of around 11%, and it also means the acid level is very high making the wine sour.

The next step is to filter the wine, and then in this microbe free wine we add a new batch of yeast along with an exact amount of sugar (24 grams per Liter). A little bit of a clarificant is added, really just a tiny bit of settling aid, which I will get to later why it is needed. Then a crown cap/beer cap is put on the bottle and these bottles are put into bins and moved to a slightly warm location. The yeast ferments the added sugar over a few weeks’ time and the byproducts are alcohol plus carbon dioxide – yes this is what gives the wine the bubbles! The crown cap forces the carbon dioxide to stay in the wine. If you were to pop the cap off the wine would be fully carbonated, and hopefully the correct amount of carbonation, which was determined by the amount of sugar added previously. Too much sugar would make the wine too pressurized, and the bottles would explode, too little would result in little to no fizz.

The wine is aged anywhere from 6 months to many years before the yeast is removed, the more time the wine ages, the yeastier and toastier the wine will get. I want our sparkling to be fruity and fresh, so I age a short amount of time. After the aging the yeast that has grown in the bottles needs to be removed so the bottles are shaken up and bottles put horizontally into a riddling machine or traditionally into a riddling rack where they settle a day then the yeast is slowly moved into the neck of the bottle by turning and raising the bottoms of the bottles over a week’s time. Each movement slight, and that settling aid is important here as it keeps the yeast from mixing into the wine and tight to the bottom of the bottles. After this process, “riddling”, the wine is perfectly clear and the yeast compact in the neck of the bottle, and the yeast is removed by freezing the neck of the bottle, then popping out the yeast-ice plug by removing the crown cap. Next, a small dose of sugar is added to balance off that very sour wine, and this is called the “Dosage.” It is personal what dosage is added, and I like a drier wine so I don’t overdo. A “Brut” is usually indicates it is on the drier side as it indicates a low sugar range, but there are other sugar level designations that indicate sweeter wines. If you see a sugar level “Doux” then that wine will be very sweet! Once the dosage is in then the cork is put in the bottle along with a wire cage to prevent flying corks, and the final touches of a label and capsule go on.

At this point the wine is basically ready to drink, but I like to give it a few weeks to settle down, just like any wine it seems to go through bottle shock. Chill the wine, pop that cork and time to enjoy! Lots of work goes into making sparkling wine, but any time, anywhere, I am willing to enjoy, and I am particularly enjoying the Roche 2021 Brut Rose!