FRENCH SNOBBERY

You know that champagne, that sparkling wine, can only be made from grapes grown in the Champagne region of France.  Any other grapes and you may have sparkling wine but not champagne.

You can crack it over the bow of a ship or pour it on the champions head but, if the grapes weren't grown in the right soil, it ain't champagne. It would violate the better senses of the wine snobs to call a sparkling wine champagne if the grapes came from anywhere else than the Champagne district of France. 

What about the sparkling you ask.  To make champagne, you allow the wine to continue to ferment in the bottle.  That produces the carbonation and all the little bubbles that sneak up your nose when you take a drink out of a wide mouth glass.  Now you know why champagne should always be served in a flute.  The narrow opening of the flute extends your nose past the liquid and out of the path of the tiny bubbles.

Does all this mean that the only good sparkling wine is called champagne?  Not at all.  American grown grapes can make a product equally as good as the Champagne of France -  it's just not champagne.
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