Karen Pronounces French Wine Words Part 2: Bubbly!

Practice Your Champagne and French Sparkling Wine Vocab and Get Ready to Chat with Your Sommelier or Caviste

Hi all,

As a companion to my latest article about French Sparkling Wine Basics for MyFrenchLife magazine, I’ve recorded the pronunciation of a bunch of sparkling wine words in French, to help those of us who are trying to communicate with our caviste (wine seller) or our sommelier/sommelière.

If you want to know more about each of these terms (and a lot more about the wonderful world of French sparkling wine, even beyond Champagne), check out the full article: A (Painless) Beginner’s Guide to Uncorking French Wine: Part 3 Sparkling Wine Basics.

And if you’d like gobs more general words about wine, like how to order a bottle or how to describe what you like, here’s another beginning pronunciation guide. Just remember, I’m not a French teacher. I’m an American living in France, fluent but not without mon petit accent. Enjoy!

Karen Pronounces French Wine Words

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OK, Here Goes! French Wine Vocabulary for Champagne and Sparkling Wines

Maisons de champagne — Champagne houses

Un caviste — a wine seller

Un sommelier/une sommelière — A sommelier

le Champagne — the region / the wine

l’Avenue de Champagne — considered the richest street in France

la Méthode Champenoise/la Méthode Traditionelle — synonymous terms for the winemaking process in Champagne

Epernay, Reims — the two most important Champagne towns
If you care anything about Champagne at all, listen to how to really pronounce Reims—no one gets this one right!!

Les crayères — ancient white chalk quarries that now house millions of bottles of champagne

Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Meunier — the three most important Champagne grapes

Blanc de blancs — a white sparkling wine made entirely from white grapes

Blanc de noirs — a white sparkling wine made entirely from red grapes

Le dosage — a sugar and reserve wine solution added to champagne near the end of the winemaking process

Crémant — another type of French sparkling wine, made outside the Champagne region

Crémant d’Alsace

Crémant de Bourgogne

Crémant de Bourgogne Eminent

Crémant de Bourgogne Grand Eminent

Crémant de Loire

Blanquette de Limoux — a lightly sparkling wine from the southwest of France

Blanquette Méthode Ancestrale — a lightly sparkling wine from the southwest of France made using a single fermentation—fewer bubbles, more sugar

Brut Nature, Extra-Brut, Brut, Extra-Sec, Sec, Demi-Sec, Doux — Sparkling wine sweetness levels, from driest to sweetest on seven scales

Mousseux, pétillant, pétillant naturel (aka pet-nat) — different types of sparkling wine

Une coupe, une flute, un verre à vin — types of glasses

L’apéro (short for l’apéritif) — a traditional French pre-dinner drink and snack

C’est si bon ! — It’s so good!

C’est génial ! — It’s great, it’s really nice!

If you want a lesson or two on how not to butcher the names of some of the more important maisons de champagne, check out this adorable guy.

I love that he doesn’t even have Veuve Clicquot on the list! If you want to know how to pronounce Veuve Clicquot or any other champagne brand name, leave me a comment below!

On veut du champagne ! On veut des commentaires

(We want champagne! We want comments!)

I hope you found this article helpful, and that you’ll put a few of these terms into practice when talking about wine. Let me know any questions you might have, or tell us all what your favorite sparkling wine is at the moment.

Chin-chin les amis !

Karen