Red, White, and Blue Bubbles

This weekend was my first ever 4 July celebration, bringing to life Bruce Springsteen songs and Tom Cruise movies. During the day I received many comments, sometimes amusing, on how it must be for a Brit to be in the US. As most of my family are Irish I don't really care, but I still enjoyed making fun of the Americans having to rely on the French to be free of the British.

I spent the evening of 4 July at my wife's family home in Chico watching a spectacular firework display, followed the next day by a tasting competition between a Champagne and a California sparkling. A couple of days later I tasted an English sparkling wine, all of which made for a red, white, and blue stand-off.

California

The wine was Schramsberg's 2011 Brut Rosé, a blend of Pinot Noir (61%) and Chardonnay (39%). Schramsberg have successfully carved out a niche for themselves as California's premier indigenous sparkling wine producer, challenged only by Iron Horse and J Vineyards (sadly recently bought out by Gallo). They make their wine in one of the hottest parts of Napa Valley - site of Jacob Schram's winery, one of Napa's earliest - but source their grapes from northern California's coolest regions, Carneros, Sonoma Coast, and Mendocino. Despite those cooler climates, the wines are most definitely Californian: fruit forward with a much lower acidity than a region such as Champagne.

Schramsberg have been making sparkling wine since the mid-1960s - their 1969 Blanc de Blancs was served at the Nixon-Mao summit in 1972 - but there's still a long way to go before their wines match those of Champagne. That balance of acidity, sugar, fruits, and autolytic aromas is a unique combination that is very difficult to find in California. So it was with the Brut Rosé: an onion skin colour, a full, yeasty nose with aromas of strawberries, and a sweetness on the palate that the acidity could not counter. ✪✪✪

France

What distinguishes Champagne from every other sparkling wine is acidity: this is such a cool region that acidity is just as about as high as it could be. Most, though not all, Champagne houses put their wine through malolactic fermentation to soften that acidity, though even then it's still often noticeably bracing. Gosset, however, are a producer who do not do any favours for the drinkers' palate: their wines are made without any malolactic fermentation whatsoever.

The Gosset wine we tasted was the Grand Rosé Brut ($85; 58% Chardonnay, 42% Pinot Noir, 8% red wine) and I was expecting to be overwhelmed by the acidity. That acidity was a key characteristic of the wine, but it was wonderfully integrated with the sweetness (9 g/L of residual sugar), the red fruit aromas, and the light autolytic aromas. This really was Champagne at its integrated, elegant best. As expensive as it is, California really didn't stand a chance. ✪✪✪✪✪

England

And then came along the English, as they often do. The English inadvertently invented Champagne by making it bubbly, but the very recent movement of English sparkling wine was led by two Americans, Stuart and Sandy Moss, who in 1996 founded Nyetimber, whose 2003 Classic Cuvée won best sparkling wine in the world in 2009. Nyetimber's success revolutionised the tiny English wine industry; whereas plantings had previously been dominated by hybrids and German clones, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are now the two most planted grapes. There are many things set in place for England to produce quality bubbles, with the soils the same as Champagne's and a climate getting gradually warmer. The main disadvantage is that making wine is very expensive, and there's a great deal of vintage variation.

The main attribute of English sparkling wine is that acidity is even higher than in Champagne: these are wines that benefit from some sweetness, which is currently unfashionable. Balance that acidity and English sparkling wine could be as great as any in the world.

The wine we tasted was Gusbourne's Brut Reserve 2008 ($30; 36% Chardonnay, 37% Pinot Noir, 27% Meunier). Unlike the Gosset, the wine has undergone full malolactic fermentation, giving a pleasant creaminess to the wine and ensuring a balanced acidity - residual sugar is 10g/L. This was a yeasty, brioche wine, not as subtle as Gosset, but with very attractive mature aromas of bruised apples. ✪✪✪✪

By dad has a saying: the French are arrogant, but they have a lot to be arrogant about. Gosset were founded in the 1500s, and although Champagne has changed greatly over the last four hundred years, the region still produces the world's best sparkling wine.