Crémant

Within the champagne-method of making bubbly, there’s a style called Crémant. Like Champagne, 2nd fermentation takes place in the bottle. However, when the primarily fermented vino is given its mixture of wine, yeast and sugar to induce bubbles, less is used. The resulting wine possesses a lighter, more delicate spritz and effervescence. This style used to be allowed in the Champagne region of France prior to 1996, but since, is only reserved for other champagne-method sparklers made elsewhere in the country, often from different grapes. Examples are Crémant d’Alsace, Crémant de Bourgogne, Crémant de Loire, Crémant de Bordeaux, Crémant de Jura and Crémant de Limoux. 

Oak Chips

There’s no question that oak treatment adds complexity to wine as long as it’s not over done. Oak barrels are usually the norm, but they’re expensive. An alternative and less costly approach that many wineries use are oak chips. Providing oak flavour, small fragments of oak in netted bags are immersed or floated in wine, similar to a tea bag in water. Certainly not as elegant or romantic as barrels, most producers would never admit to using these as it is considered inferior. However, it’s not too difficult to tell if they’ve been used. If the back label of a bottle describes a wine as having been oak treated, but mentions nothing about barrels, type or length of time in them, chances are, oak chips are the culprits.   

Late Harvest Wines

If you leave grapes on the vine after the regular harvest and pick them later, you end up with “late harvest wine”. By leaving the grapes on the vine longer, the sugar content increases so the finished wine is sweeter. However, by doing this, producers run the risk of losing some fruit to frost and marauding animals, so late harvest wines tend to be pricier as they’re more work to create. The ultimate late harvest wine is Icewine, which is extremely sweet and expensive. Regular late harvest wines are usually medium-to-medium sweet, more reasonably priced and sport flavours of honey and fresh fruit. Great on their own, they’re divine with fruit-based desserts, cookies and veiny cheeses. Got to love them!