The Alternatives to Champagne: Prosecco Vs Cava Vs Champagne

Hello bonjour and welcome to your new Bon Appetit private wines video. Welcome. I'm your host Julien and we're going to continue exploring the wonders in the world of wine so you get to understand and more importantly to enjoy your wines better. So today I'm going to take you through the differences between 3 classic styles of sparkling wines. I'm going to highlight and explain the differences so next time you buy any of those, you know a little bit better what you are getting and you understand why some of those are more expensive than others. So we're going to be looking at Champagne, of course French Champagne that is, and looking at how it compares to the other 2 classic European styles, famous styles of sparkling wines, the Caba from Spain, against a very very trendy Prosecco, Italian sparkling wine. This is that everyone's raving about. Are they all good? Are they different? What are the differences? Well, we're going to be answering exactly that with also a quick word on US bubblies as well. Let's go! My fellow wine loving friends, Julien here. Before we get started with the video, there is something that you have to know about. This video was made possible by the Bon Appetit Private Wine Partnership and the reason I worked with them is not just because it's been called the most unique wine club in America Founded by Will Bonner, the partnership is a small group of wine lovers who have come together to import excellent small batch wines that might otherwise get completely overlooked by large importers. They get them. Right now you can get your hands on 3 rare, extreme, altitude red wines from Argentina from some of the purest, highest vineyards in the entire world, way up in the Andes mountains. No middlemen, no additive packed supermarket wines here, no inflated costs. Plus, you'll get exclusive access to more wine education videos from me, just like the one you're about to watch, to make sure you become an educated wine connoisseur. Make sure to check out the link in the video description to see if you want to become partner in something truly special in the world of wine. But for now, back to your video. French Champagne is hard to match in quality as it benefits from, one, from an exceptionally cool climate, being one of the very coolest regions in France of them all. Two, it benefits from a very specific type of soil with a lot of limestone, and often even a lot of chalk, which is very rare in the world. Three, it benefits from a fantastic assemblage, a fantastic blend of grapes, namely Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, that are the best for making sparkling wines. On top of this, those grapes are perfectly suited to the soil and climate of Champagne, so a very rare conjunction of factors. Wine marketing people would actually call this conjunction unique, which in this instance may well be true. Then Champagne has a very long tradition of crafting fine sparkling wines for kings and emperors, so they've mastered their winemaking technique for centuries and centuries. So if you taste a Champagne just like this one, the one you had in your French wine selection from the club, that is called Moutard Grande Cuvée, you will generally notice that the bubbles are very fine, very elegant. On the palate you will notice some delicate notes of citrus with subtle floral notes of flowers. Overall, it's going to be very smooth, very balanced, and you're going to get a very long, lingering finish on notes of brioche. And this whole perfect harmony that is crafted, that has been developed for centuries and centuries, is exactly what you get out of Champagne, and this is exactly why it is hard to match. But let's see how the others compare to it now. You may or may not have heard of the style of sparkling wine that is called Cava, but you have to know that it's a very popular style of sparkling wine generally speaking in Europe, and you can find it easily as well in the United States, but it's particularly of course a very popular style of sparkling wine in Spain. The Spanish themselves pretty much always cheer with Cava over French Champagne, and there's a good reason for this, and there's a very good reason the Spanish are so proud of their Cava. The main reason is that Cava is made using the same exact winemaking technique as Champagne is, and this is fermenting the wine inside the very bottle you buy your wine into, which helps obtaining the finesse of the bubbles and the texture on your palate, as well as this long, lingering brioche finish that I was talking about with Champagne. They also have in Spain a very old tradition of crafting this type of wine, which they've been doing for not quite as long as the French who started with Dom Pérignon famously in the early 18th century, but they've been doing it for quite a while, since about 1872, so a solid 150 years crafting fine bubblies in Spain as well. They too know how to use their grapes to their advantage, to the benefit of their bubbly. So they have slightly different grapes in Cava, the majority of Cavas use a grape that is called Zarrello as well as Perolada, I'm not going to get into the details, but they have slightly different grapes, and you have to know that because it is Spain, it's slightly warmer, it doesn't have such a limestone-rich terroir, so the wines maybe are not just as fine but they have and reach almost that same finesse. And Cavas are just much more affordable and offer great value for money, let's say that at a $15-$20 price tag and entry level, you're getting a decent Cava which really you couldn't say for French Champagne. And even at a slightly higher price, you're often better off buying a top Cava cuvee from a very good producer than a very cheap Champagne. So when you taste a Cava just like this one from a famous international brand that is fresh in it, well, you pretty much find similar traits as in Champagne, yes, you're going to get some delicious citrus, perhaps a little bit of a riper fruit character, just like apricot and pineapple, but you're still going to get the creaminess, the softness of the bubbles, and the brioche, the buttery goodness on the background, so you're still going to get some complex, smooth, elegant, and balanced sparkling wine. Which all comes from the long aging on the lees inside the bottle, and the fermentation inside the bottle. Cava is a name to have in mind if you're looking for affordable and something different to try when it comes to good European sparkling wine. Finally, we need to talk about the Italian relatively recent superstar of a sparkling wine that is Prosecco. So Prosecco is by now everywhere, you can find it all around the world, it's become very fashionable, very popular and appreciated all around the world. The Italians now sell more Prosecco around the world than the French sell Champagne. But a couple of very important things that you need to know about Prosecco. Prosecco is not made fermenting the wine inside the bottle like the other two. Prosecco is always fermented in stainless steel tanks, which is much, much cheaper. Prosecco is also pretty much always harvested with a machine, a machine harvester, and not harvested by hand like French Champagne or Cava are. So Prosecco are much more affordable overall to make, and overall, it'd be fair to say that they are not quite as fine. They tend to be a little more acidic to the palate, which they compensate by, the winemakers or the wineries, by adding a little bit more sugar to them, which makes them taste a little bit softer. And the bubbles, you can perhaps see it just from here, the bubbles are not simply just as fine. They are quite fizzy, bigger, rougher bubbles. You can see it and you can also taste it. Yet, Prosecco wines are generally speaking very well crafted and enjoyable too. If you taste a Prosecco, yes, you get the zinginess of the citrus and the pleasing crisp fizziness for a fraction of what a bottle of bottle fermented sparkling wine would cost. Hence the success of Prosecco. Don't get me wrong, I quite like some very good Prosecco wines, especially the ones from Conegliano Baldobbiadene, so maybe remember or note that name somewhere. So look out for those, they are a little bit more expensive, but a much much better version of Prosecco. So, I quite like Prosecco, but they are not really in the same category of sparkling wines as the other two. They are more affordable and simpler to understand as well, which is why and what explains their popularity and their success globally. Now that we've got a good grasp on these 3 classic styles of European sparkling wines, just a quick additional couple of notes, just so you get even more value out of this video, and to thank you really for having watched it so far. If you like French style of Champagne with smoother bubblies as we described before, there are very good alternatives in France as well, not only in Spain. Which are those wines that are called Cremants. So Cremants are pretty much made with the exact same technique as in Champagne, but in other regions of France, that are not the region of Champagne. So you have great Cremants coming from Alsace, from the Loire Valley, from Burgundy, and even from Bordeaux itself. Somewhat like Cava, they're nearly as fine as Champagne, but for a fraction of the price, and with the French Je Ne Sais Quoi, or Finest, that Cava doesn't always have. Now just a word as promised on US Sparklings. In the US, unfortunately, it can be a little bit more difficult to know exactly how your sparkling wine is made from just looking at a label, since there is no normalized appellation system associated with a specific winemaking process like there is in Europe. In Europe, generally speaking, everything is a lot more structured when it comes to wine and a little bit less is left to the wineries. For a wine that is fermented in bottle though, look out for the mentions that are either traditional method or naturally fermented in this bottle on the labels of your US sparkling wine. Some wines may come labeled as naturally fermented in the bottle, which is not quite the same thing as naturally fermented in this bottle, hence the confusion I'm not going to get so much into the details, but yeah, there is a little bit of confusion there. So I guess, just stick to your European bubblies like Champagne, Cava, Prosecco or Cremance, so at least you know what you're buying. Anyway, I'm just kidding, there are some excellent sparkling wines made in the US as well, but you just have to research them or ask the producer and know more specifically what your producer is doing. It's not necessarily obvious from just looking at the labels. Anyways, I'll leave you to it for today. I hope you enjoyed today's video, I hope you've learned a little something today, and I will see you soon in the wonderful world of wine, in the wonderful world of the Bonaparte Wines Club videos. Au revoir! Bye bye... Yes, this Cava is actually really really satisfying, it's actually pretty pretty good!