Organizing a Champagne tasting at home? Here's what you'll need.
Short answer: for a successful champagne tasting at home you need: a few bottles around a theme (grape, dosage, vintage or area), good champagne glasses, a cooler, water and neutral snacks, and tasting cards to note down your impressions. Choose your champagnes to match the level of your company: connoisseurs or beginners.
Looking for something fun and unique to do with housemates, family or friends? Organise a champagne tasting at home! We tell you what you need to organise a successful tasting.
1. Champagne
The star of the day or evening, of course. This is what it's all about. It's important to consider who you're tasting with and what the occasion is. Are they connoisseurs or beginners? Is it an informal get-together with friends, for example, or a more professional and serious setting? You choose your bottles accordingly. Picking random bottles is fine, but a theme makes it that little bit more interesting. Think of grape varieties and blend, vintages, areas, dosage and production methods.
Set of monocépages:
Selecting based on grape varieties, for example? You could do different varieties, but a selection of monocépages (champagnes made from a single grape variety) is a nice option too. This can be narrowed down even further, for instance by choosing from a single area or a single vintage. Think of a tasting with nothing but vintage 2002 Pinot Noir champagnes from the Montagne de Reims with an extra-brut dosage. You can make it as crazy as you like. The more specific you are, the harder it becomes to find bottles. But it does make it easier to pinpoint the cause of the differences and similarities.
2. Glasses
The right glass makes a world of difference. Wide or narrow, tall or short. For a serious tasting, go for glasses with a wide bowl and steer clear of the well-known coupe glasses. They do absolutely nothing for the Champagne (other than looking festive). The professional world often uses ordinary wine glasses to taste Champagne. That is of course possible too, but it makes the Champagne bubble less in the glass.
We ourselves prefer a tulip-shaped glass with a wide bowl, so you can swirl properly and clearly detect the aromas. We also prefer a glass with a perlage point. This sits at the bottom of the glass and gives you a beautifully bubbly Champagne. The Lehmann Premium glass is a fine example of such a glass.
Speaking of bubbles, polish your glass, but don't overdo it. If you use a champagne glass, there's a chance it has a perlage point that creates bubbles. If it doesn't, an extremely polished glass will create fewer bubbles. Also, try to avoid the dishwasher. We know, that's tricky. Especially if you're organising a larger tasting. If your dishwasher has a glass setting, use it. And there are plenty of tips to be found online about cleaning glassware.
On the day of the tasting, you can remove any limescale or other dirt with steam. Hold the glass above a pan of boiling water, for example, and clean it with a linen cloth. But be careful not to polish the glasses. That would make the bubbles disappear again.
3. Cooler and ice
The temperature of the Champagne is very important. Too cold or too warm quickly makes for a completely different experience and can even work out badly. Most Champagnes are best enjoyed at around 8-10°C. The easiest thing is to put the bottles in the fridge a day in advance. On the day of the tasting, place them in a cooler with ice and water half an hour before the tasting starts. Keep in mind that Champagne is better served too cold than too warm. After all, the liquid warms up fairly quickly in the glass.
4. Stopper
Use a stopper to reseal the bottle after pouring. This keeps the aromas and the bubbles perfectly preserved. And if you don't finish all the Champagne, a bottle with a stopper will keep in the fridge for up to a week.
5. Cloth
We've already discussed that a linen cloth is handy for cleaning the glasses, but a cloth also comes in useful while pouring the Champagne. In restaurants you often see a cooler with a napkin or cloth draped over it. Among other things, it's used to dry the bottle before the Champagne is poured. That way you don't drip any (ice-cold!) water on someone or on the table. So keep something to hand for drying the bottle.
6. Spittoon
You won't always need the spittoon. But if you're organising a professional tasting, for example, or if you're planning to try veeery many Champagnes, it does come in handy (otherwise you won't be able to taste properly after a few glasses). An evening with friends usually doesn't call for a spittoon.
7. Food and drink
Very important! Make sure there's plenty of still water and arrange some snacks. Between the Champagnes it's handy to eat a neutralising cracker or a piece of bread. That way the aromas of the previous Champagne don't linger in your mouth. It's important to choose neutral flavours here. Dry bread or a salty cracker is fine. Cheese crackers, bread with spreads or other snacks will of course affect the taste of the Champagne. That can actually be very interesting too, but perhaps less suitable if the focus is on discovering the flavours in the Champagne. If that's not the case, or if you're turning it into a cosy get-together right away, you can go all out. There are so many snacks and nibbles that go beautifully with Champagne!
That's all for now. We wish you lots of fun with your Champagne tasting!
Don't feel like organising a tasting yourself? We can provide a tasting at your home. All you have to do is round up your friends and family. That way you not only taste delicious Champagnes together, we also tell you everything about this sparkling gold. Get in touch right away!