Two Female Winemakers Tell Why Sparkling Wines Should Be Part of Your Everyday Affairs  

If elegant bottles filled with tiny bubbles beckon you from the liquor or grocery store shelves and you can’t resist even when New Year’s Eve is 9 months away, you are part of a growing trend. Sparkling wine, which should not be confused with its French cousin, champagne, a title reserved for sparkling wines only from the Champagne region of France, is not just reserved for celebrations anymore.

Vineyard owners Vicky Farrow of Amista Vineyards and Kathy Joseph of Fiddlehead Cellars are on a mission to teach people that sparkling wine isn’t only an ideal beverage for anniversary and birthday parties, but that sparkling wines pair well with everyday affairs. Both women are passionate about their industry, their product and about introducing sparkling wine to a wider audience.

Sparkling wines are much more versatile and forgiving than most people realize. Still wines can be difficult to pair with certain foods, like fried, bold and spicy flavors, but sparkling wines pair beautifully with them all. The bubbles cut through the spice and create a nice counterpoint to rich foods. For beer lovers, sparkling wines will pair well with any food you would commonly pair with your favorite brew. And an added bonus is that you no longer have to worry about an open bottle losing its fizz; new champagne stoppers keep your bubbly, bubbly for about a week.

What Makes Sparkling Wines Distinct 

Color
The first variable is the type of grapes chosen. One might assume that sparkling wines that are “white” or clear in color automatically come from white grapes like the ever-popular chardonnay grape. Not so. Red grapes that spend little time in their skin before crushing will also yield a light colored juice. The longer they stay in the skin before crushing, the deeper the color.  From the candlelight tint of a blanc de blanc made from Chardonnay grapes to the pale rose of Sparkling Grenache to the deep raspberry color of a Sparkling Syrah, sparkling wines offer a rainbow of bubbles to serve at any gathering.

Process
To create their sparkling wines, both Amista Vineyard and Fiddlehead Cellars use a champagne process or Méthode Champenoise, if you are feeling especially French. After a starter wine is fermented in the barrel, a second fermentation takes place in the bottle.  “Each bottle is its own fermentation vehicle,” Farrow explained. The starter wine is placed into the bottle followed by yeast and sugar to feed the yeast, then the bottle is capped with a crown cap similar to that on a soda bottle. As the yeast feeds and turns to alcohol, CO₂ gas is released, which creates the bubbles.

Despite the beautiful bubbles, dead yeast sediment now creates an unappealing mess in the bottle. To remove it, the bottles are turned upside down for a process called riddling, which forces the sediment into the neck of the bottle where it can be removed more easily through disgorging. During disgorging, the neck of the bottle is dipped into a glycol solution to freeze the yeast plug. The crown cap is then quickly removed and the yeast is blown from the bottle, leaving a crystal clear bubbly. A little of the wine is lost during the disgorging, so the bottles are topped off with a mixture of wine and sugar called the dosage. Dosage is the stage of the process when the winemaker determines how sweet the resulting wine will be.

Classifications
The names for sparkling wines can be a bit confusing with descriptors like Brut, Dry or Dulce. To decipher the bottle, Brut Nature, Extra Brut and Brut have the least sugar/liter; Extra Dry and Dry are the mid-range in sweetness, and Demi-Sec and anything marked Doux, Dulce or Sweet are the sweetest of sparkling wines.

Insights from Two Female Winemakers

Vicky Farrow – Amista Vineyard
The variety of grape, of course, affects the flavor of the wine, but the dosage affects the polished end result.  “One of my favorite things to do are dosage trials,” Farrow explained, “You get maybe six different bottles of the wine, each with a different dosage in it. You line up all your glasses, you take the base wine that has no sugar and then you try each of those. You smell them, you sip them, you swirl them, and you decide which of those makes the best wine.” Dosage trials at Amista always include Farrow, her husband, co-owner and Winemaker Emeritus, Mike, and Amista’s winemaker, Ashley Hertzberg. If a really good customer happens to be in town during dosage trials, they might be invited along to share the fun. Even though Amista might use the same variety of fruit year to year, the character of the wine will determine which dosage level they select for a particular year. “What you are trying to do is get the very best flavor,” Farrow said.

Although when speaking with Farrow one might get the impression that she’s been making wine forever, her background is in the corporate world, not vineyards. Mike and Vicky Farrow had dreamed of owning a vineyard since they first met in 1982, but they didn’t purchase their vineyard until 1999 in the Dry Creek Valley near Healdsburg, California. Farrow soon left corporate for executive coaching and consulting, and of course, pursuing their shared passion for winemaking. Farrow said, “I’m on a mission in life to help people understand how well sparkling (wine) goes with food. It’s not just about New Year’s Eve, it’s not about a wedding toast, it’s very versatile.” Amista means making friends, and the Farrows believe that a shared bottle of wine can make every moment special. You might not remember the exact day or occasion, but you will always remember who you shared it with.

Amista’s first harvest was in 2003, and in 2008 they made their first sparkling Syrah.  At the time, their winemaker was also a teacher at Santa Rosa Community College. He asked if he could take some of their rose Syrah to his class and have them make it into a sparkling wine. When the class’s sparkling wine was complete, he brought Farrow a couple of sample bottles to try. It was so good, that they took one barrel of their Rose and had it made into sparkling wine—a total of about 60 cases. They’ve made sparkling varieties ever since. Their very first blanc de blanc wine received a gold medal. They now experiment with other grapes like their sparkling Grenache that has been a huge hit. Farrow is excited about their newest release, Amista Fusión, a blended sparkling wine with Chardonnay, Syrah and Grenache grapes, with hints of fruity flavors that is limited to wine club members.

Kathy Joseph – Fiddlestix Vineyard/Fiddlehead Cellars
At Fiddlehead Cellars and Fiddlestix Vineyard, Kathy Joseph is heading into her 28^th vintage and wants her wines to translate the “passion of making into the passion of drinking.” That’s an artful approach from a woman with a background in Microbiology and Biochemistry who once was a pre-med student. Joseph merges the art of winemaking with the science of sustainable farming.  What emerges is wine that reflects the characteristics of a certain place and moment in time. Her sparkling wines, in fact, bear the name 728 Bubbles to acknowledge the Fiddlestix Vineyard at mile-marker 7.28 on Santa Road in the Santa Rita Hills.

Joseph was initially drawn to winemaking by the science of growing two lesser-known (at the time) varietals, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc. “I didn’t even come to the table thinking that I would be a business owner, but I was mentored by people who helped me develop those skills.” She learned costs, marketing and how to operate a business from those mentors. Joseph also learned how to tweak certain elements of winemaking—the size of the vat and should you use whole clusters of grapes or not—to perfect her wines. “It helped me to translate what I was tasting into what you do to create those characters,” she said. She must have been a quick study because her first wine was selected to be served at the White House.

“We’re farmers and every year we’re dealt with a different set of circumstances—temperature ranges, frost, rainfall and length of growing season.” My decision of what to pick and when to pick isn’t static, it’s driven by the type of wine I want to make.” Perhaps it’s the scientist in her, but Joseph gets a particular thrill from not making assumptions about the best grapes, preferring to “listen” to what the vineyard is telling her.” When selecting the blends for her wines, she does blind tasting of the wines from each barrel so that she has no pre-conceived notions about them, allow each to tell its own story on her palate.

Joseph first experience making sparkling wine is a humorous one. Although she had been making still wine for decades, in 2008 she decided that the Fiddlestix Pinot Noir grapes would make a great sparkling wine. The experiment yielded 18 cases of lovely wine that couldn’t be opened because they had embedded the corks too far into the necks of the bottles. So, although tasty, that vintage is served only at private Fiddlehead parties at the winery where it was possible to either carefully extract the cork with a corkscrew or break the bottle neck. Joseph got it right the following year though, and has been making small quantities of sparkling wines ever since. “My mission is not to always pick my sparkling wine from a very specific place, but rather to be in touch with the vineyard and find what is appropriately ripe for that vintage,” she stated.

Joseph offered some advice when experimenting with sparkling wine. She offered, “Never get stuck on a particular wine.” “This is my favorite” means you’re missing out on something else. Sparkling wines should range from very fruity to earthy or yeasty, which are good things to taste in a sparkling wine. Watch out for sparkling wines with a green apple hint, which should not be a part of sparkling wine, as this means the wine has oxidized. Appreciate that there are all different styles:  some are acidic, some creamy and some sweet. At a restaurant, a sommelier should be able to tell you the base wine of a sparkling wine, to help guide you to something delicious and suitable to pair with your meal.

Recommended Pairings

Grab a bottle of sparkling wine tonight and celebrate your day. If you still aren’t sure what to pair with your wine, remember that these wines pair well with anything salty, fried or fatty, or try these suggestions:

Blanc de Blanc (white from white)

• Rusks with goat cheese and marmalade
• Any cheese from mild to pungent
• Buttery, salty popcorn
• Linguini with Clams or Mussels

Blanc de Noir (white from red)

• Thai Food
• Hearty, cross-cut potato chips
• Thanksgiving dinner
• Fried Chicken
• Roasted lamb with hearty spices and mint jelly