Sugar coating the issue |
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| Thursday, 25 September 2008 | |||||
In Dispatches' "What's in your wine?" Jane Moore asked: "Do we really want to spend so much money on a drink that can use such high levels of sugar to achieve its taste?" Yes, we do Jane. It's called the second fermentation. There is no disputing that Anselme Selosse, featured in the programme, grows beautiful grapes. But he could make much better, longer-lived Champagne if he increased his Brut dosage. To age gracefully after the oxidative shock of disgorgement, champagne requires a dosage of at least 6g. Thus the fact that Selosse's champagne contained less than half the 7g found in the three big brands was not an indication of its superiority. If it was, what would be Moore's opinion of the quality of Selosse's Exquise, which has at least 17g of residual sugar? Moore also claimed that 20% of champagne's vineyards had once been "fertilised" with urban refuse - an insane practice that had shrunk to just five producers when it was banned in 1997 - but there are no such statistics, so where did she conjure hers from? Moore gave the impression that a soil scientist Claude Bourguignon had condemned the entire region as being "rock hard" and "lacking in any microbiological activity", but that was twisting his words. There are bad vineyards in every region, but the number in champagne is very small. In fact, Champagne's soil is among the healthiest of all the classic wine regions in France. Tom Stevenson is a wine writer and authority on champagne Related Articles
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Mark Denison
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Hear, hear Tom. Let's face it...the Dispatches programme was both ill informed and badly produced. Putting 'ingredients' on the back of bottles shouldn't be an issue and it was bound to happen...but leading consumers to believe that bentonite was an ingredient as opposed to a production tool was daft! This being the case animal faeces should be listed on the back of a bag of organic spuds as an 'ingredient' ?! Best Mark D. |
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