Debate a Bubble - Champagne News and Reviews

Champagne and Romance

If you're planning a romantic evening on Valentine's Day ( à deux, or even, in the anything-goes -noughties that we live in, à trois, à quatre or more ) the chances are that you'll choose champagne to drink

Champagne has been linked to love and romance for centuries. Back in the early 18th century a certain French cardinal, if you please, by the name of de Bernis used imagery of a champagne bottle popping open to make very thinly-veiled erotic suggestions to his would-be mistress the Marquise de Pompadour whose other claim to fame, of course, is that the shape of her breasts served as the model for early champagne glasses – I'm not sure if this is a complement or not, but that's how the legend runs anyway.

They were a saucy lot back at the court of King Louis XV, but in fact the earliest reference to the magical qualities of champagne was by an Englishman called Sir George Etheridge as long ago as 1675, so perhaps we can teach the French a thing or two about the art of seduction after all.

I should have listened to my own advice

If you’ve read many of my blogs or attended one of my champagne tastings, you will have heard me say that it’s never a good idea to keep champagne too long.

Champagne is aged for many years in the cellars in France until the cellar master deems the quality to be just right for drinking. That’s the moment when the yeast sediment that has been nourishing the champagne during the maturation, is removed from the bottle which is then prepared for sale to the consumer. Unless you’re a real champagne expert it doesn’t seem wise to me to go against the opinion of the champagne maker and insist on keeping the champagne a lot longer after you’ve bought it in the expectation that it’s going to improve.

When I lived and worked in Champagne I was always told that the rule of thumb is that you can keep non-vintage champagne for 2 or perhaps 3 years and vintage champagne for 5 to 7 years : about the same time that they spend ageing in the cellars in France.

The reason for this is that once the yeast has been removed prior to the bottle being despatched from the cellars, the wine starts to decline which it does slowly, or rapidly, depending on the storage conditions. Some people like the much deeper flavours and more full-bodied texture that this can produce, whilst others are adamant that champagne is not champagne if it loses its freshness, delicacy and fabulous effervescence - and you can be sure that this will happen at some stage.