Sparkling Wine Types Explained: Champagne, Prosecco & Cava

The names on a sparkling wine bottle can look like a pile of foreign words. Champagne, Cava, Prosecco, Crémant, Sekt, Franciacorta. Almost all of them describe how the bubbles got into the bottle. Understand these four methods and it all starts to make sense.

Key takeaways

Sparkling wine is made one of four ways: traditional method (bubbles form in the bottle), tank method (bubbles form in a steel tank), ancestral (one fermentation, finished in the bottle), or forced carbonation (bubbles injected, like soda).
Traditional method is the Champagne way. It's required for Champagne, Crémant, Cava, Franciacorta, Trentodoc, Alta Langa, Cap Classique, and English and Welsh quality sparkling.
Prosecco is the big tank-method name, built for fresh, fruity, everyday drinking.
No method listed on the label usually means tank method.

What are the four ways sparkling wine is made?

Every bottle uses one of these four.

Traditional method. The second fermentation happens inside the bottle, the same way Champagne is made. It gives the finest, longest-lasting bubbles and the most complexity.

Tank method, also called Charmat. The second fermentation happens in a large pressurized tank. It keeps the wine fresh and fruity, and it's how Prosecco is made.

Ancestral method, or pét-nat. No separate second fermentation. The first one finishes in the bottle, which gives a softer, more rustic fizz.

Forced carbonation. The bubbles are pumped in, the way they are in soda. These are the simplest, and usually the cheapest, sparkling wines on the shelf. They fizz at first, but the bubbles are coarse, don't last, and go flat fast.

Which sparkling wines are made the Champagne way?

These names are legally required to use the traditional method, so the label alone tells you how they're made.

Champagne, from the Champagne region of France
Crémant, from eight defined AOC regions across France
Cava, from designated regions in Spain
Corpinnat, from Penedès in Spain
Franciacorta, from Lombardy in northern Italy
Trentodoc, from Trento in Italy
Alta Langa DOCG, from Piedmont in Italy
Cap Classique, from South Africa
English and Welsh quality sparkling, both PDO and PGI

Which ones are tank method?

Prosecco, from the Veneto in Italy, is the name to know. The tank method suits its style, fresh and light, and made to drink young rather than hold. Tank method is less expensive to produce and easier for producing higher volumes.

What about all the other terms?

Most of the rest are a country's general word for sparkling, and the method varies.

Mousseux: French sparkling made outside Champagne or a named Crémant region
Espumante, Sekt: the Portuguese and German words for sparkling, these can made traditional or tank method.
Cap Classique: the South African term for traditional method.
American and most New World sparkling: no law sets the method. When it's traditional method, the bottle says so and will usually reference it on the label. If nothing's listed, it's most likely tank method, and once in a while ancestral (Pet Nat). If it's very inexpensive, it may simply be carbonated.

Once you know the four methods, a sparkling label stops being a guessing game. The place tells you where it's from, the method tells you how it was made, and together they hint at what's in the glass before you ever pull the cork.

A couple of common questions

Is Champagne always traditional method?

Yes, by law. Only wine from the Champagne region, made that way, can carry the name. Anywhere else in the world and it references the style; eg. Méthode Traditionelle, Metodo Classico, etc...

Does tank method mean lower quality?

It's just a different style and the right choice for fresh, aromatic styles like Prosecco. A different goal, not a lesser one.

Two words you'll see a lot on Italian labels, frizzante and spumante, describe how much fizz a wine carries rather than how it's made. That's a story of its own, and we get into it, along with Prosecco, Alta Langa, and the rest, in our guide to Italian sparkling wine.