BUBBLE BURST

While drinking more than my fair share of bubbly over the festive season, I raised a few silent toasts to the Brits who invented Champagne.

The French might not like to admit it, but English scientist Christopher Merret first described a new fizzy style of wine in 1662, three decades before the monk Dom Pérignon supposedly shouted: “Brothers, come quickly, I am drinking stars!”

In a paper titled Some Observations Concerning the Ordering of Wines, Merret described how English wine importers had started sealing bottles of wine with corks tied down with string to trap any carbon dioxide caused by a second (unwanted) fermentation. After the effervescent style became popular, they deliberately started adding “vast quantities of sugar & molasses to all sorts of wines to make the drink brisk & sparkling”.

At that time the British had an important technical advantage over Frenchmen, including Dom Pérignon, who was still trying to tame the “mad wine” that was making bottles explode in his cellar: glass that was relatively shatter-proof, thanks to being coalrather than wood-fired.

From the vessels it comes in to those we drink it out of, what would wine be without glass? May de Lencquesaing — former owner of Château Pichon Longueville, Comtesse de Lalande and owner of Glenelly in Stellenbosch since 2003 — understands both. Glenelly is home to her glass collection and produces a range of premium wines under the Glass Collection label.

Easing into the New Year, I recommend drinking more blanc de blanc without bubbles — namely chardonnay — and the unoaked Glenelly Glass Collection 2013 (R65) is lively, citrusy and lingering; a perfect summer wine.