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Cheers to celebrating a new vintage!

In my last column I walked you through the differences in sparkling wines – Champagne, Prosecco and Cava. But have you heard of California Champagne? It’s a real thing and one we can credit to World War I, The Treaty of Versailles and .

To fully understand this American wine history, our Wine 101 lesson must begin with some historical and political details. Bear with me, I promise it’s interesting and will make for a fabulous conversation the next time you pop open a bottle of bubbles.

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First off, California Champagne is sparkling wine produced in California. I know it seems obvious but I needed to put it out there. Now, most of you know for a bottle of bubbles to be labeled “Champagne” it must come from the Champagne region in France and be produced using the .

Fun fact: Did you know sparkling wine wasn’t actually invented in Champagne? It was 30 years before Dom Perignon was credited for it in 1697. That’s another column. … The point is, most sparkling wines from around the world were all labeled “Champagne” up until 1891 when France set out to protect the “Champagne” name internationally through the Madrid Agreement. At the time, the Madrid Agreement only included European countries and all the details — like not using the name Champagne for sparkling wine produced outside of Champagne — were not totally upheld.

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Fast forward to November of 1918, World War I is ending and The Treaty of Versailles will be signed a few months later in 1919, which included Article 275. This article stated a lot of things but for the purposes of this column and sparkling wine, it once again tried to enforce what the Madrid Agreement laid out — establishing that only sparkling wines from Champagne could be labeled as “Champagne.” The United States signed The Treaty of Versailles BUT the Senate never ratified it due to the politics taking place at the time. Since the U.S. was entering no other country pushed the U.S. on the Champagne point.  

From what I understand, Article 275 was added to The Treaty of Versailles since France and Germany had issues over mislabeling of sparkling wines and brandies. I don’t really understand how you can confuse sparkling wines and brandies, but OK.

Now that we’ve established how the rest of the world stopped using the term “Champagne,” let’s discuss why some wineries can use California Champagne for their sparkling wines.

Back when I hosted a podcast, I chatted with Paul Ahvenainen who at the time was the Director of Winemaking from , and is now Vice President — Operations and Winemaking. Korbel is one of the few wineries that can legally label its sparkling wines as California Champagne.

“When Korbel Winery was founded in 1882, there was no question what they were going to call their sparkling wine — Champagne. The world was using this term no matter where the wine was produced,” Ahvenainen told me.

“When the United States went into Prohibition after the first world war there was some movement in Europe to protect names of some wine regions. When Prohibition was repealed, Korbel Winery and everyone else went right back to making and labeling wines California Champagne. Then World War II came along and using the term ‘Champagne’ really didn’t come back onto the radar screen until the 1950s and even then, it didn’t become an issue until the 1970s. By this time we had over 90 years of using the term ‘Champagne’ on our products.”

The issue was brought back up in the 1970s — and really pushed by the French — because of what happened at the . If you’re not familiar, it was a blind wine tasting that took place in 1976 in France that pitted American wines against French wines. The French wine judges — all unknowingly — picked American wines as the winners.

It took nearly two decades to come to an agreement but as part of the terms, “Champagne” could still be used if a producer had been using it — and marketing their sparkling wines – prior to March 10, 2006. But all of these sparkling wines must state, Few wineries have opted to use the term and instead they stick with “Sparkling Wine.” Of those who do use the term, it’s Korbel Winery, Cook’s, André and Wycliff.