Champagne, as an aperitif or with dessert?

Do you usually enjoy your champagne with dessert? What if you were wrong? What if, on the contrary, we enjoyed it at the start of a meal, as an aperitif? We will have lied to you all these years! So champagne as an aperitif or dessert, we explain everything to you!

Champagne for dessert

It's been a tradition for decades to open champagne with dessert. Since you were a child you have seen your parents and everyone around you taste this wine at the end of the meal, and toast dessert with these fine bubbles.

Yet you often feel like champagne is a little too acidic with your dessert and it doesn't seem like the best food and wine pairing.

You are right !

Champagne is quite dry, especially extra brut or non-dosed champagnes. That is to say a champagne to which little or no sugar has been added. This liveliness is more evident on the palate when accompanied by a sweet dish. This is why champagne seems more acidic than it does when you taste it at the end of a meal because the contrast between the sugar and your dessert is more marked.

To enhance a dessert, it would be better to accompany it with a sweet or sweet white wine. A Sauternes , a Gewurztraminer Grand Cru , will go wonderfully with all desserts.

If you want to taste champagne, we recommend a semi-dry champagne (that is to say with more residual sugars). Clairette de Die, sweet and light in alcohol, is perfect to accompany a dessert and satisfy your desire for bubbles!

Champagne as an aperitif

What if we finally dared to pop the cork as an aperitif. We don't think much about it, but Champagne works wonders as an aperitif. With these bubbles and these finely fruity aromas, champagne is perfect for whetting the appetite without saturating the palate. In addition, its freshness and minerality go very well with all kinds of verrines and other appetizers.

For an aperitif, we particularly recommend extra brut and non-dosed champagnes.