Pink Bubbly

My dear friend Ashley, who also follows this blog, asked me if I knew how Pink Champagne was actually made. To be honest, it is only my blog name because well... I like pink and I like champagne... so of course pink champagne sounds simply divine! Well Ms. Ashley took it upon herself to research just how pink champagne gets it's coloring. These are her findings:

"Champagne is made from four different grapes. These are Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Pinot Gris. Usually it's the first two grapes that are used in the most volume.

Chardonnay is a white wine grape - but pinot noir is a red wine grape! So how come all Champagne is not pink? The answer is in the way a grape works. Grapes are all white on the inside. It's only the outside skin that has any color. You can make a white wine out of a red grape! You would just remove the skins immediately so that there was no red color added to the wine liquid. An example is white zinfandel. Zinfandel is a red grape. To make a white zinfandel, they just let the skins stay on the liquid for a short while. That lets a small amount of the tint from the red skin color the wine liquid, giving it a nice blush color.

So normally when they make a Champagne, even though they use "red grapes", they take the skin away immediately so that none of the red color from the skin affects the overall color of the Champagne liquid. In order to make a Champagne a pink Champagne, all they have to do is let the skins sit with the liquid for a short while. The longer it sits together, the more pink the liquid becomes.

Pink Champagne was made famous in the movie An Affair to Remember, when both of the lead romantic actors fall in love with each other and share their love of the pink bubbly. In Hotel California, they like to drink "Pink Champagne on Ice".

Thanks for your help Ash! Bottoms up!