I sometimes wonder about the Vogelzang Vineyard. Apparently this site in Happy Canyon (Santa Barbara) is cool - Tercero Rosé territory. The acidity and the lower potential alcohol levels might make this location an ideal spot for fruit used in a Sparkling Wine…?
You hit it on the head, Wes. This is exactly what I was trying to ask about - under the radar personal projects with domestic fruits I might be somewhat familiar with.
But besides the costs of redirecting good fruit to a personal experiment, I can also envision the lack of time for today’s winemakers, many who are working the current vintage as well as selling and tasting across the country or countries, and how that might limit the amount of personal science projects that could be undertaken unless there was a predetermined business opportunity to do so.
Was being flippant to an extent. I don’t have any interest in making something I don’t know anything about and presume it would not be any good. Most wineries of enough size have something going on. We bottle a Pinot that is a non-commercial wine (usually about 10 cases) and we have an “orange” wine going this year that may or may not find it to the light of day.
Joe,
Another issue is that if you believe (as I do) that making a great sparkler would require grapes from a site that produces great, distinctive white (or red) still wine, the grapes are quite valuable. Compared to still wine, Sparklers require much more work and many (5+) years en tirage before they are ready to be released.
How many consumers are ready to pay more than they pay for high end Chardonnay for an American sparkler?
The answer has created a market situation where only mediocre grapes are used with similarly mediocre results.
There is a zero dosage version of Beau’s Random Wine Company sparkling Gamay. It was not really marketed, more of a special bottling for a few lucky folks. Definitely trying to get him to make more!
Flip your question around. Why aren’t there (that many) Coteaux Champenois still wines in the global market? As I (a consumer who fraternizes with a few winemakers) understand it, your whole process differs if your ultimate aim is a still versus a sparkling wine. So, having a side project requires a focus, not just a moment of whimsy. In Champagne, the still wine projects don’t generally get the best site fruit - the whole region has a generations-long tradition of focus on sparkling wine production. The still wines are made for the winemakers and locals to have a break from the bubbles and fill gaps in the dinner talble (my opinion, and honestly, there aren’t too many gaps if you have Champagne in your tool belt). The rest of the world is the other way around and at a complete disadvantage in the area of equipment and cellar setup to actually kick start a sparkling program. Stopping a sparkling wine and making it a still project is much easier than going the other way (even if the resulting still wine is battery acid).
Mount Eden did a sparkling Chardonnay with the 1995 vintage for list members. I think it was a barrel. I bought the three bottles they allocated me. They were fine. I prefer their still Chardonnay, but it wasn’t as expensive, so I loved the nerdy nature of it. I drank them all within about two years of release. They seemed a bit too ripe to be a good Blanc des Blancs.
Cheers,
fred
Add to this, the fact that there are a good many grower Champagnes that retail in the $30-40 range and it makes it quite the tough proposition for high end American sparkling.
Ha! The 14 is still being riddled. Planning to disgorge soon.
Thanks for thinking of me…I do make (or, made) a sparkling wine but it was gamay noir…Haven’t yet experimented with pinot noir or chardonnay, and it’s not super high on my list. I’d rather work with more obscure varieties like albarino, (more) gamay noir, cab franc, etc… There are plenty of people making wonderful version of those more Champagne-grape wines here in the Pacific NW:
Analemma
Kramer Vyd
Argyle (the single vyd versions)
Syncline
RMS
Day Wines
Teutonic
to name a few.
Heya, not me.
Just an anecdote from ~15 years ago when I helping Duane Cronin with bottling and he had a full riddling rack in his cellar. Being a fan of his wines I asked if he was going to branch out into sparkling wine. He said no and this was a one-off for personal use and still had to figure out how to disgorge this rack and it had been ready for disgorgement for 5 years. I don’t know if it was ever disgorged before his passing.
Wes…ask Jim about his 100% whole cluster skin fermented Muscat…
Joe, sorry I gave serious thought to the idea in 2010 & 2011, and was just too busy at the time(we moved into our own winery space in summer of 2010). In the mean time I have a not so secret Willamette Valley Syrah and a Really fun Pinot Gris Ramato to keep me busy…
…oh yeah, and a 100% whole cluster Viognier ferment that is the chubby doppelgänger of Jim’s Muscat…
I guess I am late to the party…
I recall multiple instances in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin/Master & Commander series of books where Captain Jack Aubrey drank a still wine from the Champagne region. It was referred to as “Sillery”, which must be a place-name for a non-sparkling white.
I have used Wine-Searcher a few times in hopes of locating such a wine. I presume that the author must have consumed a bit of the stuff to go out of his way to praise an unusual selection like this one.
“Champagne village profile: Sillery, a grand cru village in the Grande Montage de Reims”
“In former times Sillery was a more well-known Champagne village than it is today. In his 1875 book, Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines, Henry Vizetelly describes Aÿ and Sillery as the two villages that are best known abroad, but this apparently only lasted until about this time, the late 19th century, in the case of Sillery. It seems that the renown of the Sillery wines was created already in the 17th century, by the Brûlart de Sillery family and their Château de Sillery. At this time, the style of wines produced in Champagne were still wines.”
Has anyone tried a still white wine from Champagne (particularly non-red Sillery)?
Brian Loring makes a fabulous one that is now commercially available from the Loring website.
One thing that I believe is a great part of American winemaking culture is the freedom to do just about anything with any grape variety.
I am more intrigued by the use of non-historic grapes in sparkling wines outside of the Champagne region. Look at the fantastic stuff that can be done in Spain without the use of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, or Pinot Meunier. Sure, I have been blown away by a couple of traditional-style Californian sparklers, primarily from domestic counterparts of Champagne houses (Roederer, for example).
I think there’s a world of untapped possibilities out there for American sparkling wine. I am sadly ignorant of most current efforts, but I would love to see the boundaries of fine wine expanded in this sector. 
This.
Good sparkling wines have the most expensive production costs, most expensive packaging (sparkling bottles and corks and are way more expensive), require the most touch, are held them for the longest period of time, and have the lowest margin, and due to their weight, are also the most expensive wines to ship…