Champagne, The Great

Hi all,

Hope this beautiful weather is treating you right.

We got a few cool champagnes in this week so that's where we're going to go. The first few paragraphs are beginner's guide to Champagne, some history etc. and then I'll talk about all the champagne we have in house right now. Like Sherry Champagne is a deep rabbit hole, a mass of terroir, tradition, technique, farming etc. so I'll try and keep it short without missing too many big things. Sorry for the length!

First off Champagne is two things, obviously the region where Champagne is made and grown, and the specific technique of making the wine that it has become known mostly as "methode champenoise". The two main techniques for making sparkling wine are "methode ancestrale" which produces pet-nats and the one I've talked about before, and Champagne method (or traditional method if you're following eu rules). Champagne method is when you take a dry fermented wine, add yeast and sugar, seal it up and let it ferment again, producing co2, let it rest on the dead yeast for a while (known as sur lie, which gives the wine a a yeasty flavor that is more and more brioche the longer a wine ages) and then open it, get rid of the dead yeast and add still wine and typically some more sugar (as the dry wines from Champagne were often intensely acidic) and then reseal it. The sugar at the end is known as dosage, and a wine without added sugar is known as "non-dose".

The origin story of Champagne, that of a blind monk (Dom. Perignon) discovering sparkling wine is easily the greatest fabrication in all of wine. Dom Perignon was in fact a real person, he was not blind, and the discovery of bottled conditioning wines for effervescence can be attributed to winemakers in Limoux, in the southwest of France, over a hundred years before the monk was born.

In fact Dom Perignon's main (real) contribution to winemaking was trying to get rid of effervescence in bottled wine. He studied the problem and came up with a set of guidelines to produce wines that fermented dry, and left no residual sugar to produce co2 that would explode the fragile bottles at the time.

So what happened was wine made at the abbey where Dom Perignon lived made wines with little or no sugar and when the British started importing barrels of wine and bottling them with added sugar, and aided by new glass making techniques in England that led to glass that could withstand pressure, they had close to what we know now as Champagne. Seeing the market for this the French stopped exporting the wine in barrel and began bottling it themselves. This led to it becoming immensely popular and myths about the origin story starting to bolster the reputation of Champagne as the birthplace of sparkling wine

The real genius in giving Champagne it's worldwide reputation was the Veuve (widow in French) Cliquot, a young woman who took over dead husband's estate, including his Champgne House. She threw herself into the process resulting in several breakthroughs that included studying how much sugar was needed in the secondary fermentation to make drier wines and most importantly she came up with the process of riddling, which is how you remove dead yeast cells from bottles of sparkling wine, resulting in clear wines. This is done by slowly turning the bottles upside down while turning the bottles in a special made rack (it's mostly done by machine now, but before it was done entirely by hand, millions and millions of bottles a year). Suddenly being able to turn out sparkling wine on the scale the Veuve was able to changed Champagne into the region it is today.

More on riddling below:

https://www.champagne.fr/en/about-champagne/how-champagne-is-made/riddling

Champagne today is a region that is dominated by large negociant houses, who buy most of their grapes in bulk and blend them into brands that chase consistency. There is a small upstart of grower-producers today, bucking the trend and making some of the best wine in France.

The three main grapes of Champagne are Pinot Noir, Pinot Noir (famed in Burgundy) and Pinot Meunier, famed nowhere except Champagne. There is a ton of ideas about what each grape brings to the table in Champagne, but for my money, and especially for those new to Champagne how a specific producer makes champagne, from farming, vinification, aging, and dosage have the most to do with how a Champagne turns out. There are 4 other grapes legally allowed, Arbane, Petit Meslier, Pinot Gris, and Pinot Blanc, but their presence in total is around .3% of the planted land, and wines made with them are incredibly rare (though interesting).

Egly-Ouriet Grand Cru Brut Millésimé 2013

In Champagne having a vintage on a wine means that the committee that controls the appellation declared the year an exceptional year worthy of making a single vintage wine. In most years Champagne producers blend multiple vintages of wine that are held back to get the desired result. In years past a declared vintage was a rarity, only in very warm years (Champagne is one of the coldest winemaking regions on Earth, and ripeness has always been elusive, leading to many years of thin high acid base winesbefore secondary fermentation, which need to be corrected with more dosage after). Ripeness in Champagne brings more texture, roundness and completeness, well worth celebrating. Now with climate change declared vintages are far more common, and ripeness is becoming the norm, rather than the exception. Back to Egly-Ouriet, this is a single vintage wine, and considered their top wine. Egly-Ouriet has long been an iconoclast in Champagne, treating each of of their wines as singular, harvesting only ripened grapes (a testament to healthy practices in the region) long aging the base wines in old oak barrels like the Burgundians do, and bottling them based on their origin. This wineis from grand vineyards in Ambonnay, long considered one of the greatest terroirs in Champagne. While we only have this wine in from Egly-Ouriet right now, we will buy anything from them when it is in stock, and all the wines are treated with similar respect.

Emannuel Lassaigne 'Vignes de Montgueux' Blanc de Blanc NV

Emannuel Lassaigne hails from outside the town of Troyes in Southern Champagne, in the Aube, long considered by Northern Champenoise to be the least of all the regions and currently, due to a few vignerons chief among them Lassaigne, the most radical and bringing the most change to Champagne as a whole. In the Aube there is much less reliance on farmers selling grapes to the giant Champagne houses (Moet et Chandon, Veuve Cliquot etc. which are absolutely massive, producing up to 30 million bottles a year). This lead to smaller family houses, which had more flexibility to be experimental. The largest change the smaller houses have had is trying to make wines with as little, or no dosage, as possible, trying to ripe grapes instead of corrective measures later. This process starts in the vineyards, with organic farmers such as Emmanuel leading the charge. Emmanuel is dedicated to using as little as possible in the cellar, a huge departure in Champagne, where many winemaking houses employee teams of scientists to correct the wines at any point. He only ferments with indigenous yeast for the first fermentation, and yeast cultivated from his wines for the second fermentation, and very little sulfur and most of the time no dosage at all. The result is drier wine with much less bubbles, eschewing sweet brioche for something more akin to a dry, spicy, Chardonnay (this wine, as the name implies is a blanc de blanc, made only from the white grape Chardonnay, blanc des noirs can be made from either Pinot Noir or Pinot Meunier, or a blend). It's his non-vintage blend. Absolutely fascinating wine, but certainly not for traditional Champagne fans.

Gonet-Medville Brut Tradition NV

For traditional fans of Champagne this is the one I'd pour. While this wine is technically "low dosage" it does have a lot of the characteristics of traditional Champgnes, some brioche, a little sweetness on the palate. If it seems like I'm talking about doasge a lot it's because for me there is nothing in the process of making Champagne that is as consequential or marks the wine as much. High dosage has often been the mark of poor winemaking, and a crutch for the larger Champagne houses, and it tends to mask thin, underripe base wines, and winemakers that put farming first have long been able to getter riper, better grapes, hence why all of our wines are going to be low or no dosage. Gonet-Medeville is located in the premier and grand crus of Mesnil-sur-Oger (the grand cru wines are all grown on the white chalk soil the region is famed for).

Jean Vesselle Brut Reserve NV

Jean Vesselle Grand Cru Brut Nature Pur B3 Blanc de Blancs de Bouzy 2014

Jean Vesselle is a producer that likes to age his wines sur-lie (on the dead yeast cells) for a long time. Like dosage, this is very much a decision of style, unlike dosage this is less of a corrective measure and more to do with individual taste. Wines with long sur-lie aging tend to be yeasty, and texturally rich and, to use perhaps the most confounding of all wine terms "vinous" a term that means winelike, and in Champagne terms refers to tasting like aged wines (don't worry about it, it's a hard concept unless you taste a wine like it). too much lies aging can lead to wiens that taste bloated and dead, and it's something that requires a deft touch, which Jean has in spades.  We have both his base wine, and his vintage blanc de blancs.

Vincent Charlot 'Fruit de ma Passion' 2017

Vincent is a new producer for me, a young winemaker that represents the new vanguard in Champagne, dedicated to organic farming, and an almost obsessive dedication to the concept of Terroir, vinifying all of his 39 plots separately and releasing up to 27 cuvees a year to show off the different plots.  This is an almost unheard of practice in Champagne, where blending is the norm, and single vineyard Champagnes are rare. This particular wine is his base wine, coming from two plots. It shares a lot in common with Emmanuel Lassaigne, lower pressure, some interesting spice notes and a very low dosage.

Waris-Larmandier 'Racines de Trois' Brut

Waris-Larmandier is one of the great farming estates in Champagne. Jean-Phillipe studied under Benoit-Lahaye, one of the first vignerons to work biodynamically in Champagne. Jean-Phillipe believes these are wines made in the vineyard first and foremost. Again, low or no dosage wines to take time with.

Tarlant Brut Nature Pinot Noir/ Chardonnay 2014 Base

Tarlant Brut Nature Pinot Noir/ Chardonnay Rosé, 2014 Base

Brocard Pierre 'Saignee de la Cote' Extra Brut Pinot Noir Rosé NV

Finally, rose in Champagne has long been an overpriced scam. Producers often charge more fo rose, which is often the exact same grapes with a short maceration time to color them. So it's a pleasure to have two of the best producers of the style, Melanie Tarlant, who makes a lighter more joyful style, and Brocard-Pierre, whose Saignee de la Cote is one of Champagnes most singular wines, a deep, vinous rose that drinks more akin to a red wine than almost any wine in the region. We also have Melanie Tarlant's base champagne, which is fantastic!

Also I want to point out that we bought a copy of Jon Bonne's book "The New French Wine" for the bar and it's a great resource. Almost every French producer we carry is going to have an entry in it if you're ever curious about something that you really like.

If you have any question let me know, there's almost no region I know more about than Champagne.

Until next time,

Cory