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A few quick and easy things to look for to better understand a Champagne wine label.
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Matt: I'm with Mike Supple of SuppleWine.com - check it out - and today we're talking about reading labels. Now we're dealing with Champagne.

Mike: It's always important to deal with Champagne. Champagne is a very important beverage. If you're not a fan of it, you haven't had good enough stuff yet. So get out there, buy a good one, and drink it because it's a random day of the week. Don't drink it because you're going on a date, don't drink it because it's a Friday; drink it because you want to drink Champagne. This stuff is good. I can't stress that enough.

Matt: Right. And if you've had Champagne and you didn't like it, or it gave you a headache, it just means you weren't drinking the good stuff. Try the good stuff.

Mike: Now a key is, make sure it says "Champagne" on it. There are some great bubbles out there that aren't from Champagne, but if you don't like Champagne yet, you don't like bubbly wine, try a really good one. Make sure it says Champagne. With a few exceptions in the United States, people who have been doing it for a long time and are grandfathered in, it has to be from the Champagne region of France. That's actually a region in northern France. It's east of Paris, it's really cold, and it's one of the northernmost regions for wine making in the world. And they've been doing it for a long time. They really know what they're doing. This house in particular.

So we're talking about labels. It says Champagne on it. That means that it is from the region of Champagne. It says the name of the producer: Krug. K-R-U-G, pronounced kroog. They are a fantastic producer. It's a rather expensive bottle. This isn't your every day drinker, but this is your "it's Tuesday night and I really don't want to face work tomorrow, I want to blow some cash." This is an outstanding bottle of wine.

One thing you don't see on here that you might be used to seeing on a bunch of labels - there's no year on there. Champagne is quite often non-vintage. Wines don't have to be from a certain year, they can be blended. But most table wines, most regular wines that you drink have a specific year on them. A lot of Champagne houses are very famous and known for their non-vintage blends. Krug in particular, they call this a multi-vintage, because what they do is pride themselves on having older wines. They store them in the underground caves and they blend good years together and make this really nice style that they call multi-vintage. And it is, it's a blend of several different specific years. So that's why you don't see a year on there.

What else do we see on there? Underneath the word Krug you see the village that it's from. It says Reims - R-E-I-M-S - pronounced kind of like "rinse" but with an M. That's the name of the little region within France where Krug is.

Matt: Round. [Obscure reference to the Albino Black Sheep "End of the World."]

Mike: And you see the word Brut next. That refers to the style of Champagne. There are different styles. There's Brut, Extra Brut, Sec, Extra Sec...it refers to the sweetness level. It has to do with the sugar that they add. We'll get in to that. If you want more info on Champagne, we'll have more to talk to you about that later. But they always list the style of the Champagne on the label.

And then Grand Cuvée at the bottom. That's just what Krug calls this blend, their multi-vintage Champagne. They do have how much alcohol is in there, 12%. They have the size of the bottle, 750ml. They also have a tiny little code, you probably can't see it here, but there's a tiny little code at the bottom of every Champagne bottle. Two letters followed by a string of numbers. That tells you what kind of producer it is [among a few other things]. It tells you if the person owns the vineyard that made that wine, it tells you if it is a larger corporation that bought grapes from several vineyards. You don't really need to know that, but they do have that on every label.

It's important when you really start getting in to Champagne to give me a buzz, we'll get together and drink a lot of great bubbly.

Matt: If somebody offers this to you, just say yes.

Mike: Yeah, don't turn that one down.