SEKT vs. CHAMPAGNE: A Blind Tasting Battle of Bubbles!

Can you hear this? This is the sound of champagne corks popping all around the world to celebrate the holidays. While champagne is my sparkling wine of choice, there are alternatives available today. Prosecco, Cava, Cremon, Franciacorta, English sparkling wine, and German Sekt. Yes, over the last few decades, German winemakers have invested heavily into producing high quality sparkling wine. And I want to see whether the best of German sparkling can compete with champagne. So today I'm going to taste some of the best German Sekt available, and we're going to find out whether I can identify the pirate as champagne from this sparkling lineup. Germany is one of the biggest producers and consumers of sparkling wine in the world today. However, many sparkling wines are sold at pretty low prices and the qualities are inconsistent to put it mildly. But that wasn't always the case. Several champagne houses, KUK, Bollinger and MUM for instance, have German roots and Germans worked at other champagne houses before setting up their own Sekt house back home. So are the golden ages of German premium sparkling wine production coming back? Maybe. The overall quality has been rising and the VDP, the association of premium wine growers in Germany has released their Sekt Statut a couple of years ago, self-imposed rules for producing high end sparkling Sekt. I've added the link to the Statut in the description below for more details, but overall they distinguish between VDP Sekt and VDP Sekt Prestige and their rules are generally stricter than the rules for champagne. But is the quality also better than what we get from champagne? There's only one way to find out. Stop it, man. What a mess. Okay. Wine number one has this beautiful color. The mousse is pretty fine. I wouldn't say there's a lot of it, but it's fine and delicious. It smells of soy sauce, a little bit more yeasty. So there's quite a lot of yeasty character coming through. On the palate, it's fresh, creamy textured. It's really well made. It's not very aromatic. So I don't think this is, for example, a Riesling Sekt, which is a pointer to Germany, obviously, and away from champagne. It feels like, well, like a Chardonnay based or a Pinot based blend. So difficult start. I don't think this is the champagne. Leon was asked to buy a high quality champagne. And I think this feels not quite as complex and high quality as I would expect for a great champagne, but it, but it is really well made. There's quite a lot of yeastiness there, quite a lot of lees flavor coming through. So I'm guessing that this was aged for a long time on the lees. I think this is really good. I would rate this 90 points, complex and multi-layered sparkling wine. This is wine ASMR for sure. Wine number two is quite a bit more aromatic. So there's more fruit flavor coming through, ripe apple, a little bit of peachiness as well. The acidity is super high and intense. There's less lees character coming through. So this might be a pointer. So I don't think this is a traditional champagne blend. This might be, well, might be made with Riesling, might also be made with the Silvana or something like this. It's overall more fruity. It's really well made though, but it's not, it's not champagne. I'm pretty sure about that. So I would say this is a pretty good Riesling based zeit. Overall, I wouldn't rate it as highly as the previous wine. I think this is like an 88 points sparkling wine. Wine number three, there's a lot of mousse and it stays in the glass for a fairly long time. But does that indicate anything? I'm not really sure. Again, there's more fruit character coming through. The color is pretty golden and there's quite an intense yeasty aroma alongside the fruity notes. On the palate, it's grippy and intense with the delicate bitterness in the finish. It's really dry. The acidity is lower than in the previous wine, I would say, but there's quite a bit of fruitiness coming through. Again, I don't think wine number three is the champagne. It tastes quite Burgundian though. That might be based on Pinot Noir, maybe on Pinot Meunier. It's very dry on the palate, really grippy. I think this is a Pinot based German zeit. And I would rate it 89 points. On to wine number four. Oh, look at that. That's a thick layer of fall. Well, this is really reduced, very elegant, green apple notes, a little bit of yeastiness coming through as well. Not super pronounced. The wine is also much lighter in color. It's quite pale. It doesn't have the same creaminess as some of the previous sparkling wines. So I'd guess it probably didn't spend as much time on the Lis. Overall, I think, well, this doesn't feel like Riesling. It doesn't feel like Pinot either. Pinot Noir or Pinot Meunier. More maybe like Chardonnay could also be something non-aromatic, like Silvana, for example, which is used for producing sparkling wines in Germany as well. Let's just go with Silvana. And I think this is good, but again, not great. I would rate this 88 points. You know, I'm making all these calls, but really, well, blind tasting sparkling wines, in my opinion, is very, very difficult because quite a lot of what makes the wine a wine happens in the cellar. So it's, it's more winemaking than viticulture, than terroir influencing the wine. So it's just difficult to place sparkling wines. I've made so many mistakes, placing sparkling wines from California, from New Zealand, from anywhere in the world into Champagne and the other way around. So, so yeah, I got to stay humble. That said, let's identify wine number five. Ooh, that's different. So it's clearly golden bronze colored. And that points to the use of a grape variety that is red skinned, like Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier that are very frequently used in Champagne, but also in other wine growing regions where they produce sparkling wine. This is quite intense, rich. There's quite a lot of dimensions to this wine. It smells of blood orange, lemon zest. There's also some apple character coming through and a lot of brioche, dead yeast cell character that you get from sparkling wines that are aged on the lees for a long time on the palate. It also has this creaminess. The texture also suggests that this was aged on the lees for a very long time. So, so this is clearly a very ambitious sparkling wine. I think this is delicious. This is probably the best so far. I really like it because it just has so much power and intensity, but I don't think this is Champagne. So I might be wrong here, but it just, for me it lacks the freshness and acidity that I would expect from a Champagne that is made in a similar way like this, if I'm making sense. So if you get high end Champagne, you usually have a really intense and toasty brioche character, but there's also usually quite a lot of zing to it. This has a little bit less zing, which isn't a bad thing, but it's just a little rounder and richer. So I'm just going to say this is still German, but made using the Champagne blend and aged for a long time on the lees. And I'm going to rate this 93 points. And wine number six. This almost looks like it's all foam. It's a lot of foam here. It's like half wine, half foam, but this will disappear. This is really nice. It smells of lemon zest and there's also this brioche character coming through, but it's not super pronounced. You can also see that the color is quite a bit lighter. On the palate, you also have lots of freshness and grip and length. It's not as big as the previous one, but it's really well made. Sorry for all the burping, but I'm tasting eight sparkling wines here. So excuse me. Very structured. This could be Chardonnay. It could also be another non-aromatic varietal. The structure is really, really good. So I'm going to rate this 91 points. I think it's a delicious but lighter sparkling wine and it's really, really well made. So maybe this is Champagne. Maybe this is a Blanc de Blanc Champagne. Could be. Let's taste the other ones first. Oh, hi there. My YouTube analytics tell me that if you're watching this video, chances are pretty high that you are a guy. We all need to get rid of the hair that is growing in the weirdest places on our bodies. And that's where MANSCAPED comes into play. They told me that just like me, more than 9 million men worldwide use their products and you could be one of them. As right before Christmas, they offer their Performance Package 5.0 Ultra at a discount to my subscribers. 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I don't know whether I'm going too fast here, but I'd say this is a Riesling Zect pretty clearly. I'm 99.9% sure that it's not champagne because you don't get aromatic wines like that from champagne. It's again, super fresh on the palate. The acidity is like, so yeah, I, I'd say this is Riesling, Riesling Zect. It's a good wine though. It's, it's really nice. It's like for me, it's an 89.1. It's really well made, quite fruity, doesn't have the depth that I need in order to get above the 90 point mark, but, but it is a really nice Riesling Zect. I hope it is a Riesling Zect. It is a really nice Zect. So the last wine, again, beautiful golden color, again, wine ASMR. I love that sound. Very nice sparkling wine. So it has not the most pronounced flavors, fruit flavors. There's again, bread crust aroma coming through, brioche flavors and there's like apple and pear flavors. As well on the palate, there's quite a bit of grip and texture, which is something that I quite enjoy. It's really, there's this delicate bitterness, which is delicious. It substitutes a bit for the acidity that is not as high as it could be. So that just gives the wine a really interesting texture. I don't think this is champagne. I'm going to rate this 90 points. I think it's, it's a really well-made wine, but I don't think it's champagne. I'm not really sure what it is though, which grape varieties were used here. That's quite tricky. All right. This was a very interesting tasting, very difficult and quite delicious though. I think there's still room to grow. The quality can get better and better, but I think that's part of the game. It takes some time to understand how to make really great sparkling wine. And I'm pretty sure that most of these producers are on the right trajectory, but the big question remains, was I right with anything here? Let's just, let's just find out. Shall we? Retasting the wines, I was kind of torn between six and one. I thought they were the most similar to champagne, but in the end I decided that I thought six was the champagne, but let's find out whether I was right. So wine number one, I gave it 90 points and it is actually the Raumland Triumvirat. This was quite delicious and it is made in very similar way to champagne. It stayed 100 months on the lease. So for a long time, it's the 2012 vintage. I didn't quite pick up on that, but the quality is super high, delicious sparkling wine. You know, this is actually one of the top sparkling wines from Germany. So maybe I was a bit, maybe, maybe I could have given it a few more points. I think it's delicious though. And in the end, I gotta say, I'm happy with my rating and that's the thing about blind tastings. You kind of just judge what you have in the glass. And I thought this was really, really good, very close to champagne, but maybe not, not the greatest wine on the planet yet. Let's move on to wine number two. I thought this was Riesling Sekt. I thought it was too aromatic to be based on Chardonnay Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier alone. And therefore I thought it was German. I rated it 88 points. So let's see what it was. All right. It is actually German, but it's definitely not a Riesling Sekt. It's a Blanc de Noir from Pinot Meunier. So one of the grape varieties that is also allowed in the production of champagne. Yeah, I was kind of wrong here, but also not entirely wrong. All right, we move on to wine number three. Let's see. That is actually a Riesling Sekt. It's the 2015 Hattenheim-Hassel-Rheingau Riesling Brutnatur from Badt Winery. I'm going to add all of the wines below in the description with links to wine searches so you can look up what the price is in the market you're based in. Let's move on to wine number four. No way. All right. So this is the Christmann & Kaufmann Cuvée number 203 Brutnatur based on Chardonnay, Weiss and Spätburgunder. So I had this in Germany, but I didn't think that it was a Pinot based blend or a Burgundian grape variety blend. Fascinating. So let's move on to wine number five. I actually rated this very highly. It was kind of the oddball. No way. I can already see it here. This is the champagne. I didn't think it was the champagne, but I gave it the high score. So that already means that champagne has won this tasting. So this is the Champagne Gatinois Aé Grand Cru Brut Reserve. So it's a Grand Cru champagne, a really good one. I kind of picked up on the blend that it's a traditional blend. It's Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, no Pinot Meunier, but still, and it was delicious. I gotta be honest. It was the best wine in the lineup. Rich and complex, multi-layered. So well done champagne. Wine number six was the one where I thought this could be champagne. So let's, let's see what it is. Oh, it's Hansjörg Rebholz number 14 from the Falz. It doesn't really say what the blend is here, but for me, it tastes very Burgundian. And considering that Hansjörg Rebholz is like a Burgundian expert, it likely is. All right. I just did a little bit of research and now I get it. This is Pinot Noir. In German, you would say Pi No. So this is mainly based on Pinot Noir and there's also Chardonnay in there. It's really well made. I actually visited the Rebholz estate for my video on the Falz. So check that out if you haven't seen that already. They're making great wines and this is certainly delicious. All right. This video turns out to be a bit of a fail. I kind of placed everything wrong, but like I said, it's, it's very difficult with sparkling wines in my opinion, because quite a lot of it just happens in the cellar and yeah, well I just messed up. Come on, just get over it Konstantin. You messed up. So let's move on to wine number seven, which isn't a champagne. We know that already, unless Leon put in two champagnes and it is a Riesling. I said it was a Riesling. I said it was a Riesling from Germany. So I win. I'm the best. No, come on. I'm just joking. It's the Dier 2013 Goldloch Riesling Prestige. I rated it 89 points. I thought it was really, really well made. A really good Riesling Sekt. And I was right. It definitely tastes of Riesling. So let's taste the last one. Well, I've tasted it already. Let's open, let's tell the world what wine number eight was. It was a Franken Sekt. My Silvana Brut Natur VDP Sekt Prestige. And it was really good. I rated it 90 points. I thought it was delicious. I didn't think it was, was champagne, but Silvana doesn't have the aromatics of Riesling. It has more of a reduced, well, it doesn't, it isn't an aromatic varietal. So it's more similar to Chardonnay, maybe, maybe to Weisburg in, in, in a sparkling wine. Yeah, good stuff. So this was eye opening also indicating that I definitely need to do more blind tasting practice on sparkling wines. I think the lineup was beautiful. I think it also highlighted that champagne maybe still reigns king. I actually don't know what this retails for, but I'm guessing that it's quite a bit more expensive than most of the other sparkling wines here on the table. It certainly was very, very good, but there were also some really outstanding sparkling wines from Germany here. All of them were very good, but yeah, some that really stood out to me. I really liked the Triumvirat from Braumland, a delicious, delicious wine. I also really liked the, um, which one was it? The Christmann was also very nice, but clearly the Rebholz was absolutely delicious. And I also really liked the Diel Riesling Sekt. It was like a real unapologetic Riesling Sekt. Um, really good stuff. So thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, then please like it down here, subscribe to my channel. If you haven't done so already, my question of the day is what is your favorite sparkling wine from Germany? Let me know down below, even if you haven't tasted any, just let me know that down below. I hope I see you guys again soon. I'm going to have a little bit of a party tonight, so we'll probably empty a couple of those bottles. Whatever you do, stay thirsty.