Nothing celebrates luxury like Champagne.

All effervescence is not the same in the land of Champagne. While the knock-offs flow freely, the authentic sparklers remain a luxury you would have to pay a high price for. Photo / Thinkstock

Champagne remains the ultimate luxury libation: favoured by the rich and famous and deemed an essential toast at important celebrations. But what makes it so special and what's behind the big bucks that people are prepared to pay for the real deal?

To be true Champagne, it has to come from the eponymous French region. In the past, fashioners of fizz from across the world have cashed in on its famed name - from calling their foreign examples champagne, to name-checking its process of production, the Methode Champenoise, on their labels. However now, the region's name is safeguarded under law as a protected designation of origin as well as a lucrative trademark.

It's the bubbles that are behind much of Champagne's allure, but all effervescence is not equal. It may have been Englishman Christopher Merret who was the first to document the deliberate addition of sugar to a still wine to engender its sparkle, but the Methode Champenoise - also know as the Methode Traditionelle - was a process honed in the cellars of Champagne.

This most meticulous of methods, which results in the most complex wines with a finer more persistent mousse (bubbles), is when the second fermentation that provides the fizz occurs in-bottle.