Wine Time: Understanding Types of Sparkling Wine

You’ve probably seen those various specifications on bottles of sparkling wine;  Brut, Demi-Sec, Asti Spumante. But what does it all mean? Let’s find out!

Sure, you probably know that a sparkling wine can only be called Champagne if it comes from the homonymous region in France, but there are other ways to help decide if the bottle that you’re looking at is right up your alley. While there are a few different ways to produce them, sparkling wines all go through a second fermentation process which produces the bubbles we are all familiar with. This second fermentation allows for a lot of variation, giving different tastes to the end product.

Before starting on types of sparkling wines, let’s clear one thing up. Asti, or Asti Spumante, is a sparkling Italian wine that is produced in southeastern Piedmont. It is made from the Moscato Bianco grape, not Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, or Chardonnay like Champagne. There are other generic sparkling wines like Prosecco or Cava. Ok, now that I mentioned that, we can get on with it. Champagnes and other sparkling wines are classified in a few different ways. The first way to determine your sparkling classification is by sugar content. As seen in the graphic below, you can determine how sweet your wine will be by referring to its classification as Brut Nature, extra Brut, Brut, extra dry, Sec, Demi-Sec, or Doux. The two with the highest level of sweetness (Demi-Sec and Doux) are the hardest ones to find, especially as you move away from the bottom dollar prices.

The second type of classification is by the grape juice content. This blend is a little more confusing, because the word is used in more than one way. In wine, the term “cuvée” means a type, or blend. It is, however, an unregulated term, so it will not necessarily indicate any type of quality. Unfortunately, the same word is also used in Champagne and other sparkling wines, to refer to the first portion of juice pressed out of a specific amount of grapes. A standard unit of measure for the wine industry, the marc, represents 4,000 kg (~8,818 lbs) of grapes. That is roughly the weight of a full 40′ long cargo container, fully loaded. The first portion of the juice that is pressed is considered by some to be of higher quality. The first 2,050 liters of juice derived from a marc of grapes can be bottled as Tête de Cuvée. The next 500 liters after that is known as the tail. Another term that refers to the cuvée is the Cuvée Speciale, which does not have a formal definition. Typically it will be an aged blend at least three years old.

The word cuvée is also used outside of wine, in reference to beer, chocolate, or cognac for example.