Are We Overpaying for Champagne? (Blind Tasted vs Other Sparkling Wines)

Hi everybody, this is Agnese from No Sediment and today we are going to discuss and perhaps find out if we are really overpaying for champagne. Champagne is my number one wine. I choose it when I want to cheer myself up, I go for it when I have something to celebrate, I always want to start my dinner with champagne and preferably continue with it throughout. If you know the famous quote by Lili Bollinger, I completely and utterly relate to it. Once in a while though I come across headlines stating that we are overpaying for champagne and that there are many other great sparkling wines of equal quality and style available for half the price. So every now and then I question myself and my senses. Is champagne really that good? So much better than other sparkling wines out there that I am constantly willing to pay extra money just to enjoy it? Or am I just another part of the world's greatest marketing campaigns? And then I taste the champagne and I always answer myself the same way. It might not necessarily be better than other sparkling wines of the world but it is certainly special and unique and this style is what I love so dearly and keep coming back to. Now before we move on I want to add a note here. My love for champagne in no way means that I am dismissing the quality of other sparkling wines. Not at all. I love bubbles in general and many of my top 10 wines of each year are sparkling wines that do not come from champagne. But today I want to take a good look at myself and ask a question. Has my love for champagne been influenced by something other than the pure quality of the product? I mean I understand the concept of brand differentiation. No matter the quality you can only get the Dom Pérignon experience by drinking Dom Pérignon. There are no substitutes. So I understand that the same applies for champagne as a category for me certainly. I have also wondered whether one of the reasons for my love affair with champagne is simply that I know what to choose. Because indeed as Sarah Jane Evans, Master of Wine, said in one of my podcast interviews. You know we're all supposed to think that champagne is the very best possible wine. It's the only thing to drink. But in fact on many occasions not all champagne is as good as its reputation. I have tasted these not so exciting champagnes and I have memorized their names just to make sure that I never buy them again. After all we do pay a premium for champagne and thanks to that strong brand we sometimes also pay premium for mediocre quality. So maybe by gradually eliminating bad experiences I have created this perfect image of champagne in my mind. But before we proceed to tasting I think we need to look at least briefly at what makes champagne price so premium. We have to start with the vineyard and the raw material. Grapes. Champagne vineyards remain some of the most expensive agricultural land in the world. And grapes in champagne cost around 7 euros per kilogram and for a good quality wine you would need at least 1.2 kilos. It is also important to note that Champagne is a cool climate region with enough unpredictability. Hail, frost, rain and storms at the wrong time can all affect the quality and price of grapes. In addition to that Champagne must be aged for minimum of 15 months before release while the best producers will age it for far longer. For other sparkling wines think of Cava or Cremant the minimum aging requirements are lower. And yet we often see the top quality sparkling wines aged longer than the minimum requirement are priced much much higher as well. So now imagine that all that cost, grapes, land and the price of the glass bottle which is significantly more expensive than a regular still wine bottle is tied up in the cellar for at least two or three years. In addition to that reserve wines are added to non-vintage bottlings which are often aged much longer. Furthermore vintage Champagne must be aged for minimum of 30 months though again best producers will age much longer. And then of course we also have to add marketing, global demand and the luxury status this beverage holds. These are only few arguments behind the Champagne's price and it seems to me that this topic might require a video of its own. But the question remains am I really overpaying for Champagne as so many skeptics want me to believe? Am I simply incapable of admitting to myself that I am in fact a sparkling wine snob? To find out we have created an experiment. We are going to taste four great sparkling wines, wines I would happily enjoy myself and two Champagnes added to the mix. Because blind tasting is really the only way to find out if I'm lying to myself. Shall we begin? One note though all of these sparkling wines are méthode traditionnelle so the second fermentation was done in the bottle. So unfortunately or not so much we don't have Prosecco here. So let's start with wine number one. All right so wine number one we do feel this bruised apple character and you know a lot of orchard fruit. There's pear and apricot in it maybe some floral hints as well and slight toastiness. This wine is more towards the fruitier side rather than the yeasty side. Let's taste it. For me wine one is or not the Champagne. It does offer that really jolly and lively and juicy fruit character but the acidity is not as high. It is medium plus, it is melt watering and it is certainly refreshing but it lacks that linearity that I so often associate with Champagne. That does not mean that this is not a great sparkling wine. It is towards fruitier style not as restrained as I would expect from some of the Champagnes to be. I will give this wine 89 points. Let's move to wine number two. All right wine number two on the nose is more restrained, shyer in character. Wine number one was really expressive that fruity driven character. You don't feel as much fruit here but more of that floral character, more of that perfume. Cherry blossom and apple tree blossom and more citrus fruit driven. This one was more apple and pear. This is more lime and lemon ripe though. Let's taste them. Wine number two I really like the mousse here. It was it was so gentle and so calm on the palate. I think wine number two represents a bit cooler climate than maybe wine number one did because we have a bit higher acidity. There is slimmer body style. I think on the palate this wine is less jolly and less immediate but there is certain elegance to it and there is that fruit purity that I really enjoy. I will give this wine 90 points. Let's move to wine number three. This wine shows a bit of age, shows a bit of maturity on the palate. We can even see it here color-wise. So maybe at some point in its life the fruit was a bit crunchier and riper but now it is more bruised, more open and crushed. We still have that toasty character here and we still have you know a bit of yeast but yeast maybe in the form of baked bread crust and there are a lot of people who will enjoy this wine at its maturity level a lot. I am someone who actually prefers that crunchier fruit more often but it is definitely still live and it's not dragging its feet. Let's taste it. Beautiful focused acidity on the palate. There is ripeness of the fruit still and it's quite pleasant but you like next to that fruit you would also feel that yeasty strain, that yeasty line that just you know adds a bit of oomph, a bit of depth to the you know otherwise really ripe and and an open fruit character. I do like this wine. I will also give it 90 points. I do think it is good quality wine for my personal taste. It is just a bit mature. Let's move to wine number four. All right so this one is again slightly restrained in its character and I feel that really freshly squeezed lime juice, lemon, lime peel. There's also some floral character to it. It also gives you a hint of spring meadow. Wine number four gives that really elevated, that pure super focused type of acidity. It helps to elongate that citrus fruit, that green apple, that blossom character as well. It is quite long on the palate. I do think this is quite beautiful wine. The mousse is lively and teasing you on the palate but it is in no way overpowering the fruit or being aggressive. I will give wine for 91.5 points. Let's move to wine number five. All right so wine number five also gives you that citrus fruit character but it is much much riper. We do have here orange and we have grapefruit and maybe we even have grapefruit peel. All right so wine five it is this really interesting example because from one side I feel that elegance, that purity of fruit, that ripeness as well and that really focused mouth-watering style of acidity which I love. But there's also something that teases your nose and your palate a little bit. You remember I said that on the nose I felt slight hint of grapefruit peel and that could be both a slightly bitter element and also aromatic element. And I think it depends on the person who will taste it. For some it will irritate, for others they will really enjoy it. And similarly on the palate for wine five I felt that grapefruit peel, maybe orange peel as well. And for some again it could be slight bitter element and for others it could add the perfume and complexity to the wine. So I think it's quite interesting. I will give this wine 91 points. Let's move to wine number six. Wine number six it is really interesting. It is quite restrained stylistically but if you pay attention to what you smell in the glass you start to feel you know slight hint of apple, slight hint of pear and maybe white peach, some blossom. It slowly slowly reveals itself and it has that really creamy almost teasing character of bubble which I like. You also feel that fresh crunchy yellow apple on the finish but it is slightly cut short or maybe we have hint of iodine here as well that you know while I talk with you I start to notice on the finish. And again maybe it is the acidity that has built up because in general sparkling wines tend to have higher acidity than other wines. But I do feel that really mouth-watering lively refreshing character in acidity here. I will give wine number six 90 points. All right so we are going to reveal the wine starting from the lowest scored and then we will move up to the highest scored wine. One thing I really wish to say is that this time I did not include the top top champagnes and I did not include the lowest you know everyday sparkling wines that you can find in like supermarkets retailers. So here today we kind of have wines from the sparkling wine category that are a bit or significantly premium and then maybe champagne wines that are meeting that sparkling wine category you know price-wise. But let's just start with wine number one which I gave 89 points. I will be honest with you I'm slightly disappointed. I was kind of expecting much much more from this category. So it is Lantieri Franciacorta Satin and it is bottled under lower pressure. For me it is one of the most exciting Franciacorta categories and maybe this one has been too long in my wine fridge. However I don't think that sparkling wine ages bad. I think it has great aging capacity. Anyway let's move to the next wine. So I gave three wines 90 points. I will reveal with the wine number three which for me personally was I told you a bit so we are Krone. This is actually a single vintage so 2019 vintage. It would be nothing for champagne if I want to be honest. Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh but I know that for champagne in my book six years is nothing. However if you remember I did talk about that you could feel the tension and you could feel the quality of the fruit and quality of the bubble on the palate in this specific wine as well. So in this case I would say that this is more my fault. I have aged this wine a bit too long in my wine fridge. Oh and yes I almost forgot for those who are not familiar with method cap classique we are in South Africa and whenever I think of sparkling wines I always feel obliged to include some examples in the conversation from South Africa and of course from California as well. But these are two classic origins where you would look for quality sparkling wines as well. So let's move to wine number two. I think I'm just thinking in my mind which wine I like less. In the tasting I did not mention the residual sugar which I thought that wine number two had quite a lot and quite generous and that maybe slightly was bothering my palate. So they both had 90 points and personally I had similar liking towards their both. So I will just start with wine number two then. So we are in champagne category. So now we are Charles de Casanova. So indeed we are in champagne but as I told you I did choose a champagne that you more likely would find in you know large retailer shelves. This is one of those champagnes that offers good value and through that good value it also offers reliability and consistency and I think that residual sugar that I failed to mention should have been an indication that this is more you know larger commercially larger production. But again I think it had that nerviness it had that tension that I would expect from champagne category in general. So let's move to wine number six which I also gave 90 points. Yes yes yes so we are with Carl Sandreu Brut Natur Cava. Can you imagine this is one of the cheapest offerings in this set and it did not end up the lowest scored wine. In fact it had the same score as Charles de Casanova which I think costs around 30 euros and Krone which also costs around 30 euros and this I think costs 12 15 maybe tops. So in this specific case we do indeed have great value found in Cava and under this label I think I have included one of their wines in one of my top 10 of the year lists. So it did not disappoint again. So that is a super reliable producer. Let's move to wine number five which I gave 91 points. The interesting. All right so we are in Champagne Vazar Cocar Chouy Grand Cru. So this one comes from specific terroir in Champagne. This is grower's Champagne. It comes from a beautiful soul, beautiful family. You will see that they disclose all the information you might need. Be it the grape variety, be disgorgement, be it the sugar additions and I mean I like them a lot. They do have that very peculiar style which you could feel translated in the glass. This is really interesting because we have run out of our two champagnes and that means that on top with 91.5 points there is a sparkling wine that is not Champagne. And that is Louis Picamello Cremant de Bourgogne and Chazotte Blanc de Noir Extra Brut. And let me tell you about this sparkling wine. I think it was listed in one of my top 10 wines of the year. And there's another thing. I am quite skeptical when it comes to Cremant from Bourgogne because the best quality fruit in Burgundy usually goes and is dedicated to still wines simply because you can in fact dictate higher prices for still wines of Burgundy than you can have for the sparkling wines. So I would argue that the best Cremants of France you might not necessarily find in Burgundy despite it being relatively cooler climate, despite it being closer to Champagne, despite it using the same grape varieties as in Champagne. But of course as with everything there's always exceptions and Louis Picamello is a great exception. Not only is this wine beautifully made and in this specific wine tasting we really got a chance to see it but the fruit is actually coming from a really hip very fashionable place which is Saint-Aubin that is slightly cooler area of Burgundy and they could make a beautiful still wine out of this fruit but instead they are making top quality sparkling wine. It is by no means cheap sparkling wine but we could see that it is playing on the same league as the top sparkling wines of the world including Champagne. So the question remains am I overpaying for Champagne and in this specific case it's very difficult to judge because as I told you in the beginning I have chosen Champagnes that are more affordable in the price range and I have chosen sparkling wines that are closer to that affordable price range you know of those Champagnes. If I would have chosen you know that really regular category Champagne that costs 50, 60 usually now those labels and maybe if I have chosen those sparkling wines from Burgundy or Cava that you can buy for 10 or 12 euros then maybe we would have here today completely different conclusion. But today at this price category that you know more or less is similar amongst them all we actually see that other sparkling wines of the world offer great value and great enjoyment but Champagne is not far off. Let me know in the comment section below if you think that we are overpaying for Champagne and what other sparkling wines do you usually enjoy and make sure to watch this video next.