handtomouth

I’ve never been one to plan my day around sparkling wine. Some consider this the pinnacle of the grape-based drink, that the presence of bubbles takes wine into a realm of finer things.

I tend to feel overly-acidified if I drink more than the regulation glass for cheersing or ice-breaking. But put bubblies with food, something that most of us don’t do, and the picture changes. Last week I even enjoyed six sparklers in succession, granted that each was paired to some fine and very complementary food – except the first, which sacrificed itself as the ice pick.

The point I am making is that the modulation of food on wine means there is no way anyone can pronounce an absolute negative about a particular wine. A talented cook can take the meanest vino and, with the right balance of ingredients and flavour, bring out its hidden delights, even if this only means using the juice as a sort of vinaigrette.

One of the highlights of this sparkling tasting (held at the wine bar Caveau) was a wine that was new to me – Môreson’s Cuvée Cape. This bubbly is made from the two grapes that truly are at home here in the Cape: pinotage and chenin blanc. It contains 80% pinotage, but it’s not a pink bubbly. Pinotage does give the wine a bouncy fruit character and also a distinctly tannic tail, making this the ideal wine to pair with some food (try with venison carpaccio or sushi). There have previously been experiments with bubbly from pinotage but the category has never really caught the imagination, will this one last?

The mythology around sparkling wine is legion, and it’s worth reminding ourselves that our good cleric Dom Pérignon was more interested in making fine still wines. The re-fermentation that caused all those exploding bottles was a damn pain in his time and the story about “come quickly, I am tasting the stars!” is pure marketing, probably invoked by Pérignon’s successor, Dom Grossard, shortly before the revolution destroyed the monks wine-making endeavours.

In the Champagne region, the harvest is late, just before the chills of winter, and the fermentation is often not finished by the time it is stopped by the cold temperatures. When spring comes round again, the fermentation re-starts, causing troublesome bubbles in bottles. It was a long process to understand how to trap these successfully; and Dom P actually preferred making red wine which had less of a propensity to referment.

And while we’re debunking some myths, the silver spoon in the neck trick probably works no better at preserving your bubbles than putting the bottle in the fridge for the next day.