The SCD™ Knowledge Base

Champagne

Tom writes:
It is made like white wine and I believe it is fermented until it is dry.
It is then bottled except that some "sugar" is added to each bottle before
it is corked. This added "sugar" allows the fermentation to take off
again. The yeast consumes sugar and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Since the bottle is sealed, the CO2 can't escape and the result is the
bubbles we know and love.

Now the question is what is added. The reason I put sugar in quotes is
that I don't know whether they use sweet grape juice, or just bulk
sucrose. Either way would work to produce Champagne. Most consumers
wouldn't care, but of course we do care which it is.

The above method is the traditional French method. With modern technology
it is possible to cheat and add the bubbles using devices similar to what
soft drink producers use. I suspect doing so in France would be a capital
offense. The low cost non-French Champagnes almost certainly take the easy way out
since the original French method is very labor intensive and time
consuming.

Dryness directly relates to the amount of residual sugar. Perhaps what you
remember is a discussion about alcohol content being an indicator of
dryness. The short answer is that there is no relation between the alcohol
content of a wine and its residual sugar (dryness). And of course, the
suger in a non-dry wine could be grape sugar, sucrose, or some combination.

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