Tuesday, 1 April 2014

Szigeti's different way with the classical method

I have previously blogged about the Szigeti winery which specializes in making Osterriecher Sekt, using methode tradtionelle like they do in Champagne. However for this winery, there are major departures from the champenois way (even though the group has a champagne winery and sells champagne on its Austrian Website). Obviously the grapes are different, but whereas, only Blanc de Blanc champagnes are varietal wines (chardonnay), much more of Szigeti's output consists of varietal sparklers, including some very obscure grapes indeed. The dosage used in champagne is base wine with sugar (either beet or cane - Champagne also grew a lot of sugar beet for table sugar) but in some wines, Szigeti adds a TBA (or in one case a 6 puttonyos Tokaji) to the house liqueur de dosage. That makes those wine very special indeed. Finally, although all champagnes receive the secondary fermentation in bottle or magnums, Szigeti will ferment in all the larger bottle size up to its biggest - the 15L Nebuchadnezzar.

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