Celebrations with Schramsberg Brut Rose

Happy Anniversary to my awesome, beautiful, great cook, put up with my quirks wife!

Although today is technically our anniversary, my wife and I celebrated with a great dinner and wine and that other stuff this past weekend.  To celebrate the actual day of our nuptials, I packed for tomorrow’s flight to Australia and popped a bottle of Schramsberg 2003 Brut Rose as a finish to our sushi.

I actually bought this sparkler back in February for Super Bowl Sunday to celebrate the Steelers impending victory over the Cardinals.  Unfortunately, I had the flu Super Bowl weekend and was barely able to watch any of the Steelers victory.

Today this wine serves a dual role for my wedding anniversary as well as the Steelers Super Bowl victory!

Schramsberg 2003 Brut Rose

Picked this up at Let’s Talk Wine in Chesapeake for $46.  This is a blend of 58% Pinot Noir and 42% Chardonnay.  12.4% alcohol.  About 4,500 cases produced.  I would classify this as ‘very dry.’  Pink/salmon color.  Refreshing nose of strawberry, toast, cranberry and lime effervescence.  Very lively finish of raspberry 7UP (if there were such a thing).

Great celebration sparkler!

______________________________

What does Brut mean anyway?

Earlier this morning a colleague asked me for a wine recommendation to take to a family gathering this weekend – The easy answer… a good sparkling wine since they tend to pair well with a broad selection of bland foods cooked by in-laws.

In trying to explain the differences in sparkling wine terms I realized that I didn’t have a clue what Brut, Extra Dry and other related terms meant.  So I did a little research and have produced an amazing piece of invaluable information below as a quick remedial primer on Champagne/Sparkling Wine.

I’m sure most avid ‘e-know-files’ are well versed in the sparkling wine vernacular, but just incase there is some one else out there who isn’t, below are a few Champagne/Sparkling Wine classifications to look for on labels:

• Ultra Brut/Extra Brut/Brut Zero/Brut Nature/Brut Sauvage: Totally dry – No added sugar
• Brut: Contains no more than 1.5% sugar. Should taste dry with no perception of sweetness.
• Extra Dry/Extra Sec: Can contain up to 2% sugar. Off dry – tastes slightly sweet.
• Sec: Can contain up to 3.5% sugar. Translates in to ‘dry’ – Noticeably sweet.
• Demi-Sec: Can contain up to 3.3% – 5% sugar. Sweet.
• Doux: Can contain up to 10% sugar. Sugary Sweet.

Although the residual sugar levels noted above are the common market standards, adherence is voluntary.  And, the residual sugar amounts for each of the classifications above seem to vary slightly among multiple sources. 

Below are a few more basic items to note:

• Champagne is always sparkling wine, but sparkling wine isn’t always Champagne. Only sparkling wines from the Champagne region of northern France are entitled to be called “Champagne.”
• Champagne is almost always produced using one (or more) of three permitted grape varieties – Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier.
• In Italy, the term spumante is used for sparkling wines. In Spain, Cava is used for sparkling wines and in Germany they use the term sket.

Wikipedia has a useful page on the Champagne/Sparkling Wine process:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Méthode_Traditionnelle

____________________________