When selecting a sparkling wine it is important to know that it is the liqueur which renders the wine dry or sweet, light or strong. A really palatable dry champagne, emitting the fragrant bouquet which distinguishes all wines of fine quality, free from added spirit, is obliged to be made of the very best vin brut, to which necessarily an exceedingly small percentage of liqueur will be added.
On the other hand, a sweet champagne can be produced from the most ordinary raw wine - the Yankees even claim to have evolved it from petroleum - as the amount of liqueur it receives completely masks its original character and flavour. This excess of syrup, it should be remarked, contributes materially to the wine’s explosive force and temporary effervescence, but shortly after the bottle has been uncorked the wine becomes disagreeably flat.
A fine dry wine, indebted as it is for its sparkling properties to the natural sweetness of the grape, does not exhibit the same sudden turbulent effervescence. It continues to sparkle, however, for a long time after being poured into the glass owing to the carbonic acid having been absorbed by the wine itself instead of being accumulated in the vacant space between the liquid and the cork, as is the case with wines that have been highly liqueured. Even when its carbonic acid gas is exhausted a good champagne will preserve its fine flavour, which the effervescence will have assisted to conceal.
Champagne, it should be noted, sparkles best in tall tapering glasses; still these have their disadvantages, promoting as they do an excess of froth when the wine is poured into them, and almost preventing any bouquet which the wine possesses from being recognised.
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