A Weird Sparkling Wine Story

So I went to a well-known (and good) SF Restaurant recently with my parents and some good friends and had an annoying experience at the very end of our meal (we had just signed our bills).

At our table, while we were chatting and talking and the table behind my parents ordered a sparkling wine. During one of my mom’s stories, it suddenly felt like we had all been sneezed on by a great dane.

I could see that it had something to do with the waitress who opened the sparkling wine behind my parents, but couldn’t tell what had happened – and that table was all smiles and laughter.

But I looked down at some of the splashed liquid and realized it wasn’t just wine, it was grimy poo.

My immediate thoughts were:

1. damn, that’s a lot of poo in that wine, they should send it back. It’s either spoiled and they don’t know it, or the waitress knows and isn’t going to say anything. I couldn’t tell if it was wine poo (like lees) or rotting cork poo.
2. wait a sec, I bet this POO just went all over the back of my parents

Sure enough… my dad noticed and was pretty hacked off.

I was looking at the waitress who opened the bottle and had sprayed us- I was about to motion her over. She looked right at me and walked off. Our waitress saw this though and walked over and said she’d get the manager who came over and apologized and got some Wine Away to spray on my dad’s shirt.

Fyi- Wine Away is for red wine removal… not wine poo lees and cork poo.

The manager was trying to tell my dad about the wine needing to be opened upside down because of a sediment cap and then mentioned it had to be opened in water because of sediment cap yadda yadda, it needs a special tool, the waitress who was opening it hadn’t opened one before…. (that last tidbit annoyed me having worked in restaurants before, it’s a lame excuse)

My dad said that if that’s the case, it should have been opened in the kitchen, and by someone who had opened one before.. .

Anyway, we left… we weren’t going to get in a throwdown or anything – I’m not suggesting that, it was an accident, they apologized and I’ll leave it at that…

But my wine geekiness came out and I wanted to look up what the hell the manager was talking about. Because I had no idea what she meant by a “sediment cap” and thought her saying they needed a tool… under water… and sediment cap were … fishy at best.

But first, some background on champagne and sparkling wine. Please bear with me.

I’m oversimplfying here- but there are just a few ways to get the kick ass bubbles in your sparklers:

1. Injecting CO2 (like in soft drink production… lame)
2. metodo italiano (what they use making prosecco… 2nd fermentation in tanks, bottle under pressure) much better
3. méthode champenoise – a bigger pain in the ass, but the rewards one gains! that’s why we love well-made champagne!
4. just to list #4…. there are other ways, but meh

(read  the wikipedia article about Disgorging)

When you make sparklers… especially with the méthode champenoise (or methode traditionelle)… there’s a stage where you add yeast and sugar in the 2nd fermentation.

Well, this produces cloudy poo. The makers will then store the bottle so the poop falls into the neck (riddling or remuage in French). They then will freeze the wine and uncap it so the poop flies out and the bottle is quickly capped (disgorgement).

So what was the deal with what happened at the restaurant from part 1?

It turns out that there *is* a sparkling wine from a Slovenian winemaker called Movia (Movia – Puro) that does NOT do disgorgement before shipping their wines.

They’re meant to be stored cork down so the lees (poop) are collected in the neck of the bottle.

And as a consumer *you* actually do need to remove the lees before consuming it (or your waitperson must). And in some cases you *do* need a special tool to open the bottle (this may vary by year/bottle though according to my research)

And the manager of the restaurant was correct, the winery says you should store and open them upside down. And you really do need to open them under water.

Here’s a pic from The Gray Market Report blog of Movia’s owner opening one of his bottles so you get a better picture of what I’m trying to describe:

notice that water’s not clear anymore… looks like a homebirth in a tub

(that pic was near my office in SF, probably at an event at the Americano across from the Ferry Bldg) I’ll also post some youtube vids below.

But here’s where my questions come up

1) Isn’t this a giant pain in the ass from a drinking-it-at-home consumer standpoint? (Maybe I wouldn’t think that if I owned big glass punchbowls).

2) From a restaurant standpoint, I don’t know if I would stock this wine if it meant that
a) my staff needs a special process/tools to open it
b) my staff needed special training on the process
c) even at the cost of retail (about half of what the restaurant charges) there may be better (both from a quality standpoint and *yield* for my business standpoint)
d) I may need to *store* it differently

3) Does the novelty outweigh the quality of the wine?

#3 is a big one for me.

What’s going to sway me to try the Movia If I can go to K&L and get a direct import Frank Bonville champagne (or any other sparkler/champagne from K&L that they recommend) for the same price.

Yes I know I’ll try the Movia at some point (in a glass as opposed to having it sprayed on me…. ) and maybe it is better than some cremants, sparklers and other champagnes I can get… but

4) doesn’t it seem like lazy wine making? Is the producer asking too much from the consumer? — oh, buy a special tool to open this… watch this video first… okay, you’ll need a tub of water too… oh and uhh, yeah, you need to store this bottle in a way that you may not be able to do.

I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for reviews and scores on CellarTracker and other wine sites. Hopefully they’re objective about the wine only and not the showy opening/disgorgement.

What do you think?

Oh here are two vids- an Italian Sommelier opening a bottle (quite deftly) and a video from the owner opening one– and in this video he has a 2nd generation “tool” that he’s not using in the pics I linked to earlier.

via Dobianchi.com:

and