Almond Champagne

Almond Champagne

There are several wineries in the area that sell Almond Champagne. It's all made by the same company:Weibel. Until about 20 years ago they were based in the east bay, in one of Leland Stanford's old wineries, but they have since relocated to Hopland, in Mendocino County.

Almond Champagne is a sparkling wine that's typically made by the Charmat process and flavoured with almond essence. At the risk of coming across as a total wine snob, there are several problems with this.

First off, there's the whole issue of labelling it Champagne. In many countries, the name Champagne is legally protected by the Treaties of Madrid and Versailles. Unfortunately the USA does not officially recognise these treaties, and as a result US wineries have been free to use the term. The irony is that those wineries which respect the history and traditions of Champagne and use the true Champagne method of refermenting in the bottle refuse to use the term, instead labelling their products Sparkling Wine. Frankly, to expect other countries to respect US trademarks while at the same time allowing some of the most famous names in the world to be misused - and I'm looking at you too, Hearty Burgundy and Mountain Chablis - is just plain wrong. Note that it's not even a phenomenon limited to the bulk wine segment; I can think of several $50+ wines that use the name "Claret".

The other problem is that of adding an almond flavouring to a wine. The result is a kind of a marzipan flavoured cocktail, a fizzy amaretto. To me the flavour is completely artificial and weird. Now if you want to put a shot of Torani in your wine, that's up to you, but frankly I think you're nuts. And I'm not talking about almonds.