Among my acquaintances, few people understand that “champagne” is a sparkling wine that is made in the French province of Champagne. This is what we call any sparkling wine.
By the way, it is called sparkling because it contains carbon dioxide. In real sparkling wine, it is formed by itself, and is not artificially pumped into the bottle. How do I know this? I just had the experience of making homemade “champagne”.
The story was shared by blog subscriber Artur.
How did the idea come about
In fact, everything is quite banal. As you have already noticed, I am gradually engaged in home winemaking. Therefore, we always have our own alcohol on the festive table. As for the New Year, we also take a bottle of store-bought champagne as a tribute to tradition.
Our New Year’s table.
And that’s when it dawned on me. It happened after I grimaced at the taste of store-bought champagne. It feels like I drank some kind of chemicals. So, this disgust gave birth to a thought in my head: “Why don’t I make my own champagne, because it’s the same wine, only sparkling?”.
And that’s it, I set myself the task of celebrating the next New Year with my own champagne. As it turned out, there are many recipes and ways to achieve the desired result. I’ll share the one I used myself.
Important! Champagne is mainly made from grapes, but other fruits can also be tasted.
Ingredients
Looking ahead, I want to warn you that I chose one of the simplest options as an experiment, in order to roughly understand what you can generally expect from homemade champagne. The simplicity of this method lies in the fact that ready-made homemade wine is used.
In my case, it was a wine made from white Chardonnay grapes. I made it for my wife. Ours was dry. You will also need sugar and unwashed raisins. You should immediately stock up on bottles, preferably from real champagne.
They are quite strong and made of dark glass. Otherwise, another bottle may burst.
I use a bottle capper.
You will also need corks for champagne and a special device for capping bottles. He, I want to tell you, is worth a lot. I saw on the Internet from 2500 rubles and ending with almost 10 rubles.
But I was lucky, I managed to find such a device from a colleague of interest on the forum. He kindly provided it to me.
Important! Stock up on extra corks and bottles. This will come in handy when removing sediment.
Preparation
The first thing to do is to thoroughly clean the bottles (volume 0,7 l). After that, they need to fill in the existing white (or any other) wine. I poured almost to the very neck, as advised in the recipe. After that, pour a tablespoon of sugar into 1 bottle.
Also throw 3 raisins into each bottle. Sugar will start the fermentation process, and raisins will cause the release of carbon dioxide, since they contain natural yeast.
I pour sugar and raisins into wine.
Then, with the help of a corker, you need to close the bottles with caps. I advise you to additionally tie them with wire, as is done on bottles in stores. I put all this stuff in my basement. They must be laid in a horizontal position, and so they lie for 3 months.
3 weeks before the end of the aging period, the bottles should be placed upside down and rotated a little every day. This will allow the sediment to move down to the neck. This will make it easier to take it out. After that comes the hardest part.
The sediment must be carefully removed. I heard that there are special plugs that collect it, but I did not find them on the Internet.
Champagne is infused for the first three months.
I acted simply. He quickly opened the bottle, poured the contents into another bottle of champagne, and immediately corked it again. Naturally, he poured it through cheesecloth so that the sediment would not get into a new bottle. So sparkling wine is infused for at least 3 more months.
Important! You can insist more than 3 months after removal from the sediment. Many even strongly advise to do so.
Result
As a result, I started making my own homemade champagne in the middle of autumn. I got the finished drink at the end of spring. Naturally, I could not wait until the next New Year and tried what I did. Don’t worry, there are a few bottles left for the holiday.
The result surprised me a lot, in a good way. Of course, I don’t know what real French champagne tastes like to compare. But I think I got a decent result. The taste was very close to the wine I used.
Natural gases provide some new explosion of sensations. This is far from the carbon dioxide that is used in store-bought champagne. One gets the impression that these gases reveal the taste of wine more widely, although they are less saturated. That is, its old taste is also felt, but it is somehow perceived in a new way, or something.
Like I said, this was the easiest recipe. I would like to ask you to share a recipe when champagne is made immediately from young wine from freshly harvested grapes. This process, as far as I understand, is more complicated.
I heard that some other wines are added to this must. In general, you can share a detailed recipe if you are in the know. We need to grow in this regard.
Dear readers, remember that alcohol abuse harms your body. Take care of yourself!