Answers to final champagne quiz #4

WINE TALK
1

This is the final champagne quiz as sourced from David White`s “But First, Champagne”.

Define the following:

1] cepage
% of each variety in the composition of a blend

2] lieu-dit
“place name” for a parcel of vines

3] liqueur de tirage
mixture of sugar and yeast used to initiate secondary fermentation

4] liqueur d`expedition
a sweet liquid usually made of a still wine and cane sugar used to top off champagne after disgorgement- “dosage”

5] pupitre
an inverted V shaped riddling rack usually holding 60 bottles at a 45 degree angle

6] remuage
AKA riddling which forces the lees and sediment to the neck of the bottle via gravity

7] sur latte
storing a bottle on its side after bottling while ageing on its lees prior to disgorgement

8] sur pointe
storing a bottle on its neck after riddling and prior to disgorgement

9] vin clair
a still wine that is used to create a base for the final blend; usually many vin clairs are used

Cheers,
Blake

Please excuse typos and unintended auto-corrects

2

is google allowed

3

shouldn’t 8 be à pointe? Ah, looked it up, interesting and “sur pointe.”

4

1] cepage - grape composition

2] lieu-dit - small vineyard

3] liqueur de tirage - yeast and sugar ( I think most houses use beet sugar these days) added with still wine that is added to Champagne to cause secondary fermentation

4] liqueur d`expedition - makes up the doasage

5] pupitre - no clue, never even heard of it

6] remuage - riddling or turning of the bottles of champagne pre-disgorgement

7] sur latte - storing of the bottles pre-disgorgement

8] sur pointe - don’t know

9] vin clair - still wine/Champagne in barrel - Most importantly, make sure you spit when sampling vin clair, especially in the morning or unlike yours truly on my first visit to Champagne, your stomach will feel like it’s filled with battery acid and your head will be spinning all afternoon.

5

sur pointe is standing a bottle on its top, upside down.

Lieux dits are named vineyards, not necessarily small.

6

Awesome R@y. I assume you did this from memory and not Google Search as I would have had to do in a few instances.

7

Right on!

8

Only for #9 which had a had a pic of me looking green.

9

See answers now inserted into the initial post.

10

Ray Tuppatsch wrote: “Most importantly, make sure you spit when sampling vin clair, especially in the morning or unlike yours truly on my first visit to Champagne, your stomach will feel like it’s filled with battery acid and your head will be spinning all afternoon.”

Brings back memories of an early visit to Champagne, January 1985. The 1984 vintage had been cold, rainy, mean, incredibly acidic even by Champagne standards. January 1985 was the month of the Siberian Express, records for cold were shattered all over Western Europe. I was in a cellar in Champagne to taste 1984 vintage still wines before being bottled. The temperature in the cellar was about 15 fahrenheit (-10 Celsius). The wine out of cask would not have been much warmer, with only the miserable 9% or so of alcohol keeping it from a solid state.

My mouth has never burned like that first sip, before or since.


Dan Kravitz

11

Its clear after reading your and Rays account, I will not be sampling a vin clair.

12

I would take issue with saying that cépage refers to percentages rather than just the vareities. The more likely word would be assemblage.

13

Thanks Blake I really enjoyed all of these.

14

I agree. Assemblage or cepage as I knew it to be was about the varieties, not the % of them. Perhaps David took it to another level with his definition. I did not had a problem with it thinking that the winemaker may in fact denote % along with the varieties. I simply used his definition and I`ll leave it in for now.

15

Good David. That was my intent. I`m delighted you and others got some enjoyment out of the quizzes. I certainly learned some things on both ends which was also my intent.