Christmas, it’s that time of year when a few wine writers seem to drag out their sparkling wine grab bag of myths and proceed to spread the contents around any publication they can get their hands on. To be fair, they must face editorial pressure to come up with something “festive”. So it’s easy to understand some problems when the wine market is focused on one product type.

But year in, year out, it’s the same thing.

Myth One: The best way to make sparkling wines is using bottle fermentation and disgorgement technique.

Actually what they should write is that this method, sometimes called “Methode Traditionelle” (which seems a little pretentious to me) is time consuming, and expensive. It is a good way to produce sparkling wine, but it also means your wine will taste of yeast and fermentation flavours. The other downside to the bottle fermentation method and that is extra alcohol. Around 1.5% extra.  There are other ways of getting the bubbles in, and all can make extremely good wine.  Perpetuating the idea that one is better than another method stops winemakers from experimenting with new methods of production for fear that their wines won’t fit into the acceptable category or pricing level.

Myth Two: Roses are made…

Usually someone has a go at describing how Rose bubbly’s are made and leaves out one of the two ways it is done.

For your reference the two ways are as follows. Not including dodgy methods.

1. red wine is added to white wine.
2. Red grape skins are left in the the juice for a short period of time to impart colour. This is the more difficult way and the results are more erratic.

Myth Three: If you buy parallel imported wine the world will end.

Some wine importers and retailers have done a wonderful job of getting some wine writers to scare the crap out of the Champagne buying public (this mainly applies to Champagne as it is imported to NZ). By telling them that all manor of things might be wrong with cheap “name” brand champagne because evil parallel importers may not have stored it in the best place or at the best temperature. This makes no sense at all, there is no guarantee, even if the wine has come through “the right channels” that the same thing hasn’t happened to it. Likewise there is no reason the cheap Champagne won’t be OK or stored well. What’s more, if there is something wrong with the wine you buy, you can take it back and get another bottle or a refund. Parallel importing does not exempt retailers from the consumer guarantees act.

I’ve often wonder if this a strategy to hold the price up and stop people discounting.

The other story that gets trotted out as part of the evils of parallel importing is “make sure it’s fresh”.

This really gets my goat. Champagne, even non vintage improves with a little age. A year or two can do wonders. Only a couple of weeks ago I had a magnum of Moet NV, it was one of the millennium edition bottles so it certainly wasn’t “fresh” whats more the storage was rubbish. Basically it had been kept on the top shelf of a walk in wardrobe in Matakana for the last eight years, hardly ideal conditions. However, the wine was fantastic! I’ve had plenty of similar Champagne experiences that further damage the idea of Champagne as a fragile butterfly. The wine is actually rather robust.

Next Christmas, I’m hoping we get something “fresh” from our wine scribes.