Best Cheap Wine! Champagne Alternative: CRÈMANT D'ALSACE |French Sparkling Wine Under $20
Channel: ZIGGING by Mark Sigg
Date: 2022-02-08

Stuck with your plans for Valentine's Day? Here I'm featuring wine to celebrate with, whether you're drinking with a date or flying solo! As with celebrations, we've got yet another wine video. Previously, we've featured sparkling wines as cheap alternatives to Champagne: Cava, Prosecco, and Vin D'Mosseaux. Today we're featuring sparkling wine from France - - - but it's not Champagne, obviously! We're featuring Champagne's lesser known cousin: Cremant. While Champagne attracts all the attention and many might dismiss all other sparkling wines aa inferior, Cremant is made almost entirely the same way that Champagne is made. It makes use of the Traditional Method of doing a second fermentation in the bottle as opposed to Italy's. Prosecco that does fermentation in a vat or larger tank. Cremant is thus just as tedious in making Champagne. It is also regulated by the AOC or Appellation D'Origine Controlee. Why is it not Champagne then? Well only sparkling wine exclusively coming from the Champagne can use the said name. Cremant, on the other hand, can come from a handful of French wine regions: Alsace, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rhone Valley, Jura, Limoux, and the Loire.

Today's Cremant is a Cremant D'Alsace as it's coming from the northwestern region of Alsace. As this region is famous for growing prized varietals such as Riesling, Gewurztraminer, and Auxerrois, today's bottle is made from Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, and Pinot Noir. This bottle comes from the wine producer Arthur Metz as a 2020 vintage Brut. Interestingly, although Alsace is not too far from Champagne, its climate is slightly warmer with the harvest typically more ripened, thus being a litte bit sweeter. This does not necessarily mean that these are sweet wines! More ripened harvests just mean more natural sugars and having less of a need to use sugar, especially for the kitchen 2nd fermentation in Cremant. Thus, Champagne is actually known to add more sugar with Cremant resulting into more subtle flavors.

#sparklingwine
#crémant
#valentines 

Credits:
Photo from the Alsace c/o: Jorge Franganillo (https://www.flickr.com/people/46191841@N00)

OC Wine Society 
https://ocws.org/wine-education-101-get-to-know-the-alsace-wine-region/

Oh My Disney
https://ohmy.disney.com/movies/2014/03/25/should-you-move-to-belles-provincial-town/

YG Entertainment and Jennie Kim