Prise de mousse

Literally, “capturing the sparkle,” a term for the secondary fermentation in Champagne. The secondary fermentation takes place inside each individual bottle. It is this secondary fermentation that creates Champagne’s bubbles.

Napa Valley is smaller than Chianti Classico.

Answer: False.

It’s the other way around. Chianti Classico is far smaller than Napa Valley—both in the overall size of the region and in planted acres of vineyards. The Chianti Classico zone is just 177,500 acres (71,800 hectares) in total size. By contrast Napa is 500,000 acres (202,343 hectares) overall. In planted acres of vineyard, Chianti Classico has 17,290; Napa has 45,000. (7,200 hectares versus 18,211 hectares). Correspondingly, about 3 million cases of Chianti Classico are made every year, while 9 million cases of Napa Valley wine are made. Of course, the denomination Chianti Classico is just a small central zone in the “heart” of Tuscany. The separate denomination Chianti is spread over a much larger area within Tuscany. If the statement had been “Napa Valley is smaller than Chianti,” the answer, shockingly enough, would have still been FALSE. Chianti covers 35,237 acres (14,266 hectares), about 10,000 acres less than the Napa Valley. All of this just goes to show how tiny many of the world’s top wine regions are, for Napa Valley accounts for just 4 percent of all the wine made in California and 0.4 % of all the wine made in the world.

“In Spain, no matter if you make screwdrivers, at some point after you have saved a little money, the first thing you want to do is own a winery. It is very important to the Spanish soul.”

—Yolanda Carcía Viadero
Winemaker, Bodegas Valduero

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