Bubbles - you know you love them and many an occasion in life is marked by popping bottles
they're also quite often used in champagne cocktails and actually the idea for this episode
sort of struck me while i was making a death in the afternoon video which you can watch here if
absinthe and bubble sounds like a good time to you but do you really have to use champagne or like
will prosecco suffice and then what the hell is a pet nat so here to answer all of our questions
is the effervescent Brodie Comer and i might even be lucky enough to get her to make me a cocktail
later so stay tuned Brodie is a sommelier and a winemaker as well as a fellow committed hedonist
so i couldn't really think of anyone better to guide us through this carbonated minefield
so thank you very much for coming thanks for having me no worries um so i guess to get started
what glass should we be drinking out of we've got a few different options here does it matter?
um there are a few things that you should look for if you want the ideal champagne glass
what you really want is a glass with quite a wide bulb at the bottom um having a wider bulb at the
bottom means that it releases a lot more aromas from the wine and you want something with a more
narrow rim so something sort of like this glass really with a nice narrow rim like this and that
will capture all the bubbles into the glass you can kind of just use whatever you want at the end
of the day i always this is my favourite one because it's got a little hollow stem and you
see all the bubbles so even though i know it's like technically not as good because i think
the the bubbles disperse like more quickly um it just makes me feel really glamorous
which is important isn't it yeah all right so you go this one and
i'll go this one and i guess the first question is what makes champagne so special
i guess the thing that makes champagne so special? is that uh champagne is obviously from the region
of champaign and it's got really amazing soils it's got really chalky soils it's really cool
climate so you get really amazing really bright acidity very mineral wines that you don't really
get from other sparkling wines around the world so that's what's really special about champagne
but there's still heaps of amazing alternatives to champagne that are being made and plenty of
other places around the world now well yeah so i mean obviously we're going to have to drink
champagne we're doing this for you guys it's uh definitely not us that are enjoying it today but
um i guess just to have a little taste to see if i can find these minerals that you're talking off
um but then i guess my next question is are there other ones which are maybe a bit cheaper
but i guess similar sort of style? yeah um this these two are really good examples of that so um
there are other places in the world that make uh champagne - sorry, such a good sound -
um so there's places like uh in spain in Penedes where they make cava which is
made in the same way as champagne so it goes through two fermentations one outside of the
bottle and a second fermentation in the bottle which is where you get all those lovely bubbles
and they're aged on the lees which is what they do in champagne so you get a nice kind of toastiness
and brioche yummy characters like that um so cava is made yeah in spain from uh local varieties
from xarel-lo, macabeo and we've got here another alternative which is from the loire valley so this
is made from chenin blanc which is a local variety to the loire valley and it's made in the same way
so the same as champagne the primary fermentation and then a second one in the bottle and ageing on
the lees yeah so that's where you get all that texture and complexity yeah yeah cheers cheers
because yeah you do get that real kind of like bready yeasty that like is just so different
from other sparkling wines like that's to me kind of how i always know if it's champagne champagne
absolutely yeah yeah and that's all from the yeast autolysis so what happens with the yeast inside
the bottle as they actually die and then they give off all these amazing aromas of like baked
bread and brioche so they they kind of sacrifice themselves for us 100 percent but i've said this
before on here that um cava obviously bomba where i work is a spanish restaurant so we serve a lot
of cava and people can be a bit distrusting of it i think because there was a lot of like not
very good cava um flooded the market for a while but actually well-made you know good quality cava
is such good value for money um again like yeah very complex and heaps going on to think about and
everything but generally like a third of the price of of even another french sparkling quite often
absolutely yeah yeah it's a good little hack that one now the other one that we see all the time and
you know that people are most familiar with and is used a lot in cocktails and things is prosecco
and that one's a bit different right? it is yeah so prosecco um originally comes from the veneto
region of italy it's made from a grape variety called glera and it's made a bit differently from
champagne it doesn't go through two fermentations it just goes through one fermentation and instead
of the bottle sorry the bubbles coming from being fermented in the bottle and trapping the co2
it's actually carbonated in a tank so it's not as i guess high quality and you don't
get all those lovely toasty characters because it's not aged on the lees like
champagne method sparkling is yeah but it's a really fun sparkling wine to have if you want
something that's a little bit more fruity and not as sort of savoury and toasty as a champagne
method sparkling yeah so i guess that's obviously why it's a bit more reasonably priced often
because it's not as like labor intensive yeah but also again not to say that it's not delicious
totally and especially like on a hot you know crisp and clean like on a hot summer's day
that's just what you want or and definitely in your cocktails your spritzes and things like that
um you want something that's just a bit cleaner and going to allow the other flavours to come
through as well yeah absolutely um now the other one so i've got this little guy here a bit of a a
new kid on the block uh what is a pet nat and should i be worried that they're always like
really cloudy and have bits in it? that's a good question because i think that's something that
is a bit of a barrier to a lot of people trying pet nat the cloudiness is just because it's not
filtered but that's that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it and the little floaty
bits is just because it's some fermented in the bottle sometimes little bits of lees and tartrates
uh get stuck in there so tartrates are like these little crystals they're totally harmless to drink
we call them wine diamonds which is kind of nice and the lees is fine too it's not you know some
people take use it to for face masks and stuff they think it's really good for you but they're
totally fine to drink it's completely safe yeah um pet nat is petillant naturel or another name
for it is methode ancestrale so it's a type of sparkling that was kind of discovered by accident
well in fact actually all sparkling was discovered by accident what a happy accident i know totally
right like the benedictine monk dom perignon who's a lot of people will
know the brand dom perignon it's very famous he actually accidentally got sparkling in his
uh table wine from champagne and he was doing everything he could to get the bubbles out of it
so it's an accident but um pet nat yeah is a wine that is doesn't it's not like champagne where
it goes through two fermentations to get the bubbles it just goes through one fermentation so
during the fermentation of the wine when there's a certain level of sugar the wine maker will
put it into the bottle and then it will finish fermenting in the bottle and the byproduct of the
fermentation is the co2 or the bubbles so they get all trapped in the bottle and that's why sometimes
pet nats a little bit sweeter than champagne because it can it just kind of stops fermenting
when it feels like it it's not as controlled a process so sometimes pet nats might be a little
bit sweeter than champagne yeah find uh that most people like they're really concerned about
their wine being dry it's probably the number one question i get asked um because i guess people a
lot of people have like bad experiences of kind of like really cheap moscato and stuff when they're
kids and so they don't want that yeah but um well first of all is there kind of an easy way
of telling if you're in a bottle shop or something how sweet or dry something is going to be? yeah
and second of all you know does sweetness always have to be bad? like i feel like yeah
it's obviously um it's obviously going to be each individual's perception but you know sometimes i
feel a bit bad for those wines that do have a bit of sweetness but that's actually totally
desired and yeah right for that wine yeah yeah um i think on the sweetness um with it depends on the
wine so i think that is like you said there's a perception that dry is always the best but
uh with champagne in particular it's grown in a very very cool uh region which means the
wines have very very high acidity because i mean this is delicious but like yeah the acid is yeah
yeah but it does this has actually a bit of sugar added to the dosage and i think even though it's
quite like acidic it's quite balanced as well and so that is a really good demonstration of
how important it is to actually utilise a bit of sugar in champagne making well it's the same as
cocktails sometimes i'll get someone be like can i have a mojito with no sugar and of course i'm like
sure if that's actually what you want but it's gonna not be a very you know you need i i will
promise i won't make it too sweet but it needs to have a little bit of sugar in there otherwise
it's just like lime juice and rum yeah which is a pretty like yeah not particularly desirable
combination its like sucking on a lemon yeah it's not super delicious yeah it's all about balance
really and i think just like cocktail making in wine making you're always looking for balance
and so with champagne because it's really high acid ideally you're looking for something
with a little bit of a dosage dosage just means that they add a little bit of sugar
so but with things like prosecco you don't really need dosage because it's a lower acid variety yeah
um and so therefore it just has like a lot more like fruit sweetness yeah yeah totally so um
that's kind of why sugar is not bad when it comes to sparkling it just really depends on what type
of sparkling it is yeah um in terms of like when you're in a bottle shop and you're trying to work
out uh how to you know what's dry what's sweet there's some on the back of the label often you'll
be able to find like this one here you probably won't be able to see it on the camera but it says
brut nature so that that when it says brute nature what that means is there's been no sugar added
at all so this is a really bone dry sparkling um so it's quite often a bit more savoury as well
actually rather than like super fruity yeah yeah so it can be kind of nice like to have something
like and because it's not as high acid as champagne a like a bone dry cava can be quite
balanced because it's it's not super acidic yeah um and then you've got something like this uh
loire valley sparkling here and on the back it says extra dry but sometimes it might say extra
brut so that just means that it's got just a tiny bit of sugar added um just to balance it out a bit
and then um some wines will say brut which means that it's had a little bit more sugar added but
it's still dry because brut means dry and then you can find something that says demi-sec which
means that it's a bit of a sweeter sort of style of sparkling so sometimes you'll find
uh from the loire valley demi-sec sparklings so they're a little bit semi-sweet but they
are starting to go out of fashion because now as these regions are warming up their acid levels
in the wines are dropping so they don't need to really add so much sweetness they're actually kind
of a little bit out of balance yeah with all that sweetness in them which is so interesting like how
climate change is actually just changing all of these traditions that we've had for so long in
terms of farming um because i know like a lot of producers are you know bigger producers are like
buying vineyards in different countries and stuff now to try and get like a similar style of fruit
than they used to be able to get on their own vineyards but they just can't anymore because
everything's getting hotter yeah it's pretty crazy it's wild like in champagne now we're
seeing more and more extra brut or brut nature so low to no dosage or addition of sugar because
a lot of the areas of champagne are getting so warm that they don't need to add sugar anymore
because their acid levels are dropping and they're buying vineyards in england in the uk i know
it's pretty crazy maybe there'll be a scottish wine at some point i wouldn't be surprised
other than buckfast which is an adopted scottish wine um now one thing uh i guess in terms of that
just like working out what you like and what you don't i tend to find that i like
um champagnes and and you know and australian sparklings and things that say blanc de blanc
on them why is that? okay question um blanc de blanc is means that it's all white grapes
so in champagne that means that it could well there's seven great varieties but it could be
pinot blanc or pinot gris or chardonnay but most commonly it's chardonnay yeah um and i love chardy
that makes sense it does yeah so that's what blanc de blanc means it's um a white grape based and so
blanc de noir means it's a black grey face so pinot noir pinot meunier um are the two main
varieties um so yeah if you want blanc de blancs are a bit more minerally a bit more acid driven a
bit more kind of uh citrusy sort of style whereas a blanc de noir is a bit more of a fuller bodied
bigger style of sparkling yeah cool that i'm glad to get to the bottom of that
um and i guess that kind of probably also leads into the next question which is like when bubbles
are pink like when they're rose you know is that because you can get white champagnes which are
made from red grapes but yeah what's kind of the difference there when it's pink? because
pink bubbles are probably the superior bubbles oh 100 percent like the most festive of all bubbles
um so when they're white if it's made from black grapes but it's or red grapes um but it's a blanc
it's a white wine it means that what they've done is all the colour in wine comes from the skins
from the red skins so if you've got a pink wine it's made from red grapes and it's had a little
bit of time of macerating of the juice with the skins and that's where you get the colour from
but in sparkling they can use red or black grapes um to make white wine and that means
that it hasn't had any contact with the skin at all so they just press it really quickly
and it doesn't touch the skin yeah because all of the juice is white i guess if you eat a red
grape it's still white on the inside which is something that you don't really think about
yeah yeah cool and then i guess just to to finish off um you know for people that are at home or
like even myself sometimes when i go into a bottle shop that just has heaps and heaps of options um
you know what do you what kind of questions would you think that you should ask the
um or you know in a restaurant or whatever on a wine list like how do you start to narrow it down
do you have sort of a few questions that you ask people when they come into the shop or to
a restaurant where you're serving and sort of talk to help them yeah just decide what's going
to be right for them? yeah yeah i mean i think in a bottle shop setting it's thinking about you know
do you want something that's fruity or do you want something that's savoury
if you want something fruity i'd suggest go for a prosecco or a pet nat but if you want something a
bit more savoury and complex go for a champagne method sparkling but it doesn't necessarily have
to be champagne if you don't really want to spend that much money because unfortunately as much as
you know we deserve to drink champagne every day it just doesn't always happen
do you think that's kind of different in a restaurant setting or was that sort of the same
questions that you'd be asking? i think so yeah yeah just think about you know what sort of style
of wine you're looking for if you want something that's just a bit more fun a bit more fruity and
festive um just let the let the bartender or the sommelier know and it's always good to give them
a bit of an idea about what your budget is because then they can steer you in the right direction as
well yeah yeah i feel like that's always a hard one when you ask someone for a recommendation and
and they either go wildly out of your budget or sort of even like a bit lower than what you
were thinking because it is a special occasion or something so i think giving like a price
bracket is always a good one and yeah basically can determine whether or not you are going to
be like champagne champagne or something in that similar style but you know there's so many awesome
aussie ones that are really quite good value for money and i'm sure the same would be true in the
states in the wine producing regions and things there yeah plenty of bargains to be had absolutely
um well thank you so much brodie so hopefully that's kind of cleared up some questions in the
ever-changing world of sparkling but obviously if you did have any other questions then i'm sure if
you drop them in the comments that i can get get our resident expert here to clear anything up that
we didn't cover um and i think it's about time that we started making some cocktails
now that we've had our initial glass of champagne so make sure that you subscribe and
hit the notification bell so you don't miss out on that episode when it comes out thanks cheers