Fizz!

Fizz! tells the stories behind the increasingly vibrant sparkling wine industry, exploring recent changes in vineyard and cellar and explaining why it really is worth paying more for some wines. It sets out the huge diversity of wine styles now on offer, and presents profiles of producers making a difference to the world's sparkling wines.

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Anthony Rose's Fizz! brings readers up-to-date on the exciting global developments in sparkling wine today. Fizz! explains how sparkling wines are made, whether by the traditional method, the Charmat, or tank method or the bicycle pump method (carbonation). At the same time it examines the crucial elements that go into sparkling wine and the contribution of such agents as yeast, the secondary fermentation in bottle, the blending process, the use of oak and bottle ageing. The chapter on the vineyard, explores its significance in sparkling wine, from the legendary white chalk soils of Champagne to other terroirs and their respective soils and climates.


A third of the book is devoted to the best-known sparkling wine, Champagne. No other wine region in the world, let alone a sparkling wine region, has even come close to Champagne in the success it has enjoyed, ever since the pious monk we know as Dom Perignon discovered the secret to making sparkling wine in Hautvillers. The book profiles the most exciting Champagne and sparkling wine producers, teasing out the stories behind the wines and focusing on the people who make them.



The rest of Rose's book charts the rise of the English sparkling wine industry, changes in Spanish Cava production and the popularity of Italian Prosecco (although serious sparkling wine lovers are turning their attention to fine, traditional-method Italian fizz now coming out of Franciacorta and Trentino). With huge improvements in Rieslings and Spatburgunders, German sparkling wines are also making waves. Elsewhere, when the Champagne houses decided to create sparkling wine outposts in California, they kick-started an entirely new industry, one that has been extraordinarily successful on the domestic market for which it was intended, and, more recently beyond the US. The discovery of cool climate regions in Australia has given fresh impetus to Australian sparkling wine; and that in turn has had a knock-on effect in New Zealand. South African sparkling wine too, known as Methode Cap Classique, has made a quantum leap in quality over the past decade. Emerging countries like Canada, Chile, Argentina, China, Japan and India are also making waves in sparkling wine.