Champagne and French Fries Day!
Champagne and French Fries are a pretty delicious pairing.
Anna Marie of Unraveling Wine feels very strongly about this. So strongly that she started Champagne and French Fries Day as an International Wine Holiday in 2021. She and her friend Kleopatra set the date as January 10th (Anna Marie’s Birthday).
Last year, I did the rounds of the French fry places nearby, and we did a pairing! You can read about that here.
(We include some tips on recrisping your fries too!)
Here’s the thing: different fries can pair better with different Champagnes! Then you layer on the sauces…you see where I am going.
Look at this French fry and dipping sauce experiment, like a microcosm for all cooking and pairing!
Are you ready to learn a little about how to make this pairing amazing?
Different Champagnes?
Yes, my friends, not all Champagnes are created equal, nor would we want them to be! It’s the differences and nuances that make them exciting!
There are many differences in Champagnes, from regions to blends, styles, and dosages, that is, the sweetness level. (There is much more going on in the Champagne region, with grower Champagnes, vintage Champagnes, and more, but we will only discuss aromas and flavors today.
Why do French Fries go with Champagne?
This is all about salt and fat. Delicious fries are salty and fatty, coating your palate with each bite. Not unlike that soft drink you pick up at the drive-thru, the bubbles in Champagne cleanse your palate, so every munch on a fry tastes as good as the first.
Nuances in French Fries and sauces
With fries, there is variation, right? Shoestring, curly, crinkle cut, steak & Waffle fries…These all feel different in your mouth! Some are crunchier, some softer. They carry that salt and flavor differently. Some might even be sprinkled with more than just salt! Curly fries notoriously have a spice blend sprinkled on them.
Sauces can also bring in many additional flavors, from honey mustard to barbeque in its many varieties. There is, of course, ketchup, then mustard, ranch, mayo, and, of course, fry sauce, that blend of mayo and ketchup that I love with Shake Shack fries.
All of these elements change the textures and flavors in your mouth.
Variations of Champagne
So, what affects the flavor of Champagne? First, the grapes. Typically, Champagne is made from 3 major grapes: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier. There are a few others, but we will stick with those 3 today for simplicity’s sake.
These 3 might be blended, but let’s talk about them on their own or when they are at least the majority of a blend.
Blanc de Blanc
That means “white of white” and indicates a Champagne made only with Chardonnay. These wines are likely to have notes of citrus and green fruit.
Blanc de Noir
“White from black”. These are black grapes made into a white wine (so little skin contact to get the color) and then made into a sparkling wine. These are primarily made with Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier.
From a Pinot Noir-based Champagne, you will find notes of berries, think cherries, blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries.
From Pinot Meunier, you will find juicy red fruits with earthier forest floor notes, perhaps sweet herbs and tea.
Lees contact and texture in Champagne
The bubbles in Champagne are created by yeast that are eating the sugars. These yeasts die and decompose in the bottle. (I know it doesn’t sound terribly pleasant, but just wait!) In Champagne, this is the point where they age the wine on the “lees” or dead yeast cells. This is often written as “sur lie” or “on the lees.”
This aging allows the yeast to stay in contact with the wine. This is where you get all those “brioche” and “bready” notes on Champagne. It can also enhance the texture of the wine on your palate.
Want to get geekier? There is a great article by Emily Oleisky on the Gravity Wine House Blog here.
Dosage, Residual Sugar, & Sweetness Levels in Champagne
Last but not least, we can talk about the sugar levels.
After the second fermentation, the bottle is riddled (slowly spun and turned upside down to gather the yeast in the neck of the bottle. It is then disgorged (the method to remove the yeast). Often, this is done by quickly freezing the bottle’s neck and removing the cap to let the ice block of dead yeast shoot out!
Of course, then, the bottle is not quite full and needs to be topped off. At this point, the winemakers decide how sweet they want this wine to be and top it off with “dosage” or “Liqueur de Expedition” in French. This is typically a mixture of wine and sugar syrup. The amount of sugar you add determines the sweetness level.
The names can be a bit confusing because “Extra Dry” and “Dry” are not really on the dry end of the chart. Here’s the breakdown:
- Brut Nature = less than 3 g/L of sugar in the final product, with NONE added after the second fermentation. This is the driest.
- Extra Brut = 0-6 g/L
- Brut = less than 15 g/L
- Extra Dry = 12-20 g/L
- Dry = 17-35 g/L
- Demi-Sec = 33-50 g/L
- Doux = more than 50 g/L of sugar
The sweetness level will change the flavors in your mouth! Typically, in wine, you want the wine to be sweeter than the food, so we should be good with the fries here. Then, when you start adding seasonings and sauces, you can see how they pair!
Sweetness can counterbalance heat (as in spicy heat). So, if you are more daring than me and perhaps have some Siracha for your fries, you might want to balance that with a sweeter Champagne! Depending on its spice level, even the barbeque sauce may want to go with a wine in the middle of the scale.
Of course, all these things are dependent upon your individual palate!
Here’s a little video I put together to celebrate!
Grab some friends, some Champagne, some fries, and then give all this a try!
It’s January, y’all! We could use a holiday to break up this cold month! Dive it and enjoy!
Robin Renken is a wine writer and Certified Specialist of Wine and WSET 3 Certified. She and her husband Michael travel to wine regions interviewing vineyard owners and winemakers and learning the stories behind the glass.
When not traveling they indulge in cooking and pairing wines with food at home in Las Vegas.
Check out our book series, “Tempting Spoonfuls” available through Amazon!
Inspired by the flavors and aromas in wines, these books create “tempting spoonfuls” of flavors to pair with wines.
“Tempting Spoonfuls – Pairing single bites with glorious wines” – Our first book paired wines from boutique wineries on the west coast, in California, Oregon, and Washington, with delicious spoonfuls.
This book is 60 pages, 18 recipes, lots of beautiful photos, and insights into some fantastic small wineries!
“Tempting Spoonfuls – small bites paired with wines from around the Globe” – This book takes us around the globe to explore 12 wine regions, a wine from the region, and then gives you a recipe for a pairing!
A slightly larger book at 104 pages, this time you learn about pairing with a type of wine from a region. Rather than a specific bottle, you can look for a style of wine from a region and feel confident that it will go well with the recipe pairing we provide. We give you 12 recipes, each to pair with a wine.
The goal is to make your mouth water and encourage you to create your own “Tempting Spoonfuls.”
English 
Italian
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with us.