What is the difference between sparkling, champagne, and frizzante? These wines result from the winemaking process, the amount of residual sugar in the wine, or the region where they were produced – better known as terroir.
Many wine consumers confuse the terminologies between champagne, sparkling, and frizzante wines.
Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.
-Scott Fitzgerald
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Sparkling Wines
Directly, I can tell you that all champagne is sparkling wine, but not all sparkling wine is champagne.
For a wine to be considered sparkling, it must have carbonation — that is, the presence of carbon dioxide, generating the bubbles known as perlage.
Champagne
Champagne is a sparkling wine produced in the Champagne region, located in northeast France.
It was in this region that, in the past, the monk Dom Pérignon and the Clicquot family innovated the way sparkling wine is made, helping the French region to gain a reputation in the wine sector.
In 1927, the Champagne region, with around 32,000 hectares of vineyards, won its Denomination of Origin, giving its winegrowers the right to be the only ones authorized to call their wines like champagne.
However, in 1974, the Brazilian Supreme Court granted the same right to the Peterlongo winery, founded in 1915 in the Serra Gaúcha, south of Brazil, as it was understood that they already used the same traditional method of producing sparkling wine, even before the creation of the Champagne Denomination of Origin by the French in the 1920s.
Due to pressure from the international market and mainly from the French against the Brazilian decision, Peterlongo Winery decided to remove the name from the label of most of its sparkling wines, leaving the word champagne only in its premium product.
Frizzante Wines
The main difference between sparkling and frizzante wines is the amount of carbon dioxide from fermentation. Frizzante wine has at most half the pressure found in sparkling wine. Frizzante wines have between 1 and 2 atmospheres of pressure at 20°C, while sparkling wines have 5 to 6 atmospheres of pressure at 20°C.
Just watch the bubbles of Frizzante wines. They are more subtle than those sparkling wines.
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I hope this article has helped you improve your skills. To learn more, take a look at Sauvignon Blanc: The Enthusiast’s Guide To Wine Lovers.
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