Champagne - Some Last Tidbits

Some odds and ends to wrap up my recent trip to Champagne:

First of all, I was wrong when I said that Peter Liem hasn't yet written about single-vineyard wines in Champagne. He wrote an article that appeared in the San Fransisco Chronicle a few years back, and like everything he writes, it's worth reading.

And speaking of Peter...he was a great host. Our first night in Dizy, after a day of driving from Paris and through the Marne to visit a couple of growers, Peter whipped up quite a dinner. He likes to cook Japanese food and we ate simmered Sea Bream, age-dashi tofu, bok choy and mushrooms, miso soup with enoki mushrooms, pickles, and rice that he prepared in a clay pot.

And we drank a delicious bottle of 1999 Marie-Noëlle Ledru Brut, and then an absurdly good bottle of 1976 Diebolt-Vallois Blanc de Blancs. Amazing wine - must age more Champagne.

We also drank a fair bit of Brandy de Jerez, including the rich and concentrated Equipo Navazos La Bota de Brandy Nº 13 and the deeply satisfying Gutierrez Colosía Brandy de Jerez Juan Sebastián Elcano Solera Gran Riserva.

Peter and I drank lots of other interesting things in the late evenings, including a pair of rare Amaro that are not imported to the US. With each sip I could feel the growing outrage and resentment from my friend, the writer of the Amari file.

I got a kick out of the lunch that Alexandre Chartogne served after tasting through his wines. The terrine with the aspic ring around it was good - pork head on top, a strip of blood sausage in the middle, and other parts on the bottom. But the one that looks like a loaf of bread, the terrine with fois gras and pastry around it, that one was truly memorable. A glass jar of fois gras too, in case we wanted to sample it without the bothersome pastry around it. There was cheese too. There were no vegetables. Everything was delicious, but I hope that his diet is typically more varied. I was assured that it isn't.

I had my first taste of Bordier butter. And I got to eat it several times, actually. With sea salt, with seaweed, and plain unsalted - each one a special treat with layers of flavor and texture that I didn't know could exist in butter. It reminded me of how simple things are usually not as simple as we think they are.
I listened to Charles Philipponnat talk for a while, and he is as knowledgeable as they come. Friendly and charming, too.

I drank more Georges Laval wine in one sitting than I am likely to in the next few years.

Including his great 2009 Coteaux Champenois, from the tank.

I walked by the old vertical press at Champagne Pierre Peters. It's no longer in use, but it is a beautiful thing.

I stood mid-slope in the Clos des Goisses and looked down at the village of Mareuil-sur-Aÿ.

It was an amazing and unforgettable trip, but beyond the wine and the food and everything else, the best part was that I got to spend so much time with my good friend.

Visiting Champagne Salon in Le Mesnil-Sur-Oger

My final visit of the Champagne trip was also one of the grandest, a visit to Champagne Salon. It was getting dark when we arrived but Export Director Jean-Baptiste (Tista) Cristini walked us out the back of the house and into a vineyard called Le Jardin.

Most of it was replanted in 2003 and none of the grapes have been used in Salon vintages since then. Still, it was a rush to be standing in one of the 20 vineyards that Salon uses to make their wine.

Salon has been around since the early 1900's, but there isn't a lot of wine to be had. They make one wine and one wine only, a vintage Brut Blanc de Blancs made entirely of Le Mesnil Chardonnay. And they don't make it very often. In the years since 1905 there have been only 37 vintages of Salon to come on the market.

For a Champagne house of such stature, it was a bit startling to see how little wine there is in the cellar. All of the Salon wine from the 1999, 2002, and 2004 vintages - all that there is for the whole world, is in this cellar (that looked kind of like a garage). And there are incredibly few bottles that remain of older vintages.

Walking through the cellars and looking at the few bottles of old wine, I had an experience that brought me quite close to forever etching my bad name in the collective memory of the Champenois. I was marveling at how few bottles there were of some old vintage and Tista spoke to me in a tone that I know well, as I use it when I'm trying to keep calm when, for example, asking my two year-old to put the scissors down. "You might want to move forward a little," he said. Calm, cool, collected. But I sensed the unspoken urgency in his voice and stepped forward, slowly. "You almost just knocked over our last 8 bottles of 1943 Salon, the year of the death of Mr. Salon himself." I honestly felt the bottles touching my coat as I stepped away.

Sighs of relief, nervous laughter. Tista decided to offer us a special treat, and picked out a bottle of 1982 Salon to disgorge right then, à la volée. Then we went upstairs to the tasting room.

Tista, by the way, will be married in a matter of two weeks, to his girlfriend of at least ten years. He will not wear the odd hat in this photo, made of white flowers and wire to his wedding. He will, however, be completely charming, as he always is. Congratulations on your wedding Tista, and all the best to you and your soon-to-be wife!

All together we tasted five vintages of Salon, including the 1999 which will be released in May of 2011. I have so little experience drinking Salon wines that my notes are useless, lacking in context. But I will tell you that each of the wines showed a regal presence, amazing depth, and sheer class of raw material. The 1982 was interesting because it was quite reductive at first. I enjoyed it anyway, its richness and class not completely obscured. We drank it hours later at Tista's house with dinner and it opened up beautifully, showing lovely mushroom notes, a palpable chalkiness, and great balance and finesse.

This was a wonderful way to close out my first visit to Champagne, by tasting the storied wines of Salon.

Hung up on Classification, Champagne Style

I think that the lines that distinguish grower Champagne from big house Champagne are too rigidly drawn. If a producer farms their own grapes and makes wine from those grapes, we say that they are making grower Champagne. If a producer like Francis Boulard, for example, buys just over 5% of the grapes he uses to make his wines, do we still say that he makes grower Champagne? Most of us would say yes, and that's probably because his practices in the vineyard and in the cellar reflect the values that are encapsulated within the grower Champagne ethos. We're willing to give a little, in other words, when categorizing producers and their wines.

Entry hall at Champagne Louis Roederer.

Unless those producers are operating on a large scale. Consider Louis Roederer, for example. Roederer is a huge estate that owns vineyards all over Champagne, over 200 hectares in total. Roederer's range includes a non-vintage Brut, three vintage wines including a Blanc de Blancs, a blended Brut, and a rosé, and then Cristal and Cristal Rosé. All of these wines are made exclusively from Roederer's own grapes, except for the non-vintage Brut. That's right - Cristal is a grower Champagne. And if you're ready to dispute this, thinking that the farming is Monsanto-style industrial, think again. Listen to what Peter Liem has to say in his overview of the house on ChampagneGuide.net:

...Roederer has completely stopped using systemic herbicides and is increasingly investigating more environmentally-friendly methods of viticulture, even attempting trials at biodynamics beginning in 2007 (following a seven-year period of “cleaning” the relevant parcels), which has since been expanded to five hectares in all. Another 25 hectares are planted with cover crops, tilled and worked organically, and the house is seeking to gradually expand these practices in the future.

The grapes are estate grown, viticulture and cellar work is conscientious and modern, and yet I do not think that anyone who pays attention to these things would classify Cristal, or any of Roederer's wines as grower Champagnes. Unless I am misunderstanding the definition of grower Champagne, Roederer's wines are grower wines, except for the NV Brut.

The point of this, actually, is not to convince you that Roederer makes grower Champagne. The point is that our thinking about grower Champagne might be a bit too rigid, having been shaped by marketing forces that although more romantic and not as well funded, are still marketing forces, in the end.

Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon pouring 2002 Cristal.

What would you rather drink - Cédric Bouchard's Roses de Jeanne or Roederer's Cristal? Until recently I would have immediately chosen Bouchard's wine, and although I'm not sure right now which I consider to be the finer wine, in the past I would have always chosen Bouchard based on my ideas about the stylistic differences between the two houses. But you know what - Bouchard sells a wine that he didn't farm or make, wine that was made by an old friend of the family, a wine called Inflorescence La Parcelle. If you bought that wine before the 2007 vintage, you are buying wine that Cédric Bouchard selected, not farmed or made.

And there's nothing wrong with that! I love Inflorescence, and the fact that Cédric Bouchard didn't farm the grapes or make the wine himself doesn't make it a lesser wine. The fact that Roederer is huge and a luxury brand doesn't make Cristal a lesser wine. Rappers and bling aside, Cristal is among the greatest wines of Champagne, and if you reject it based on dogma about grower versus big house Champagne, you are shooting yourself in the foot.

2002 and 2004 Cristal, and pretty tasty too.

And here's another thing - I don't see how any Champagne can be considered to be "natural wine." Almost without exception, commercial yeasts are added to the bottle in order to initiate secondary fermentation, and that goes against the "natural wine" formula. So Bouchard, Selosse, Lassaigne, and all of the rest of them, everyone is equal when it comes to not conforming to "natural wine" standards.

Ever find yourself not buying Pierre Peters Champagne because it is too popular, a Terry Theise big house within the world of grower Champagne? Ever find yourself turning up your nose at a glass of Roederer NV Brut in favor of another, perhaps lesser wine because Roederer is a big house? Every find yourself secretly thinking that some or other grower Champagne really doesn't taste so great, or secretly enjoying a glass of big house wine? I have, and it's all pretty silly. Pierre Peters makes utterly fantastic Champagne, truly fine wines, and so does Roederer. The Roederer NV Brut will surprise you if you drink it with an open mind. Actually, I have no idea what you'll think of it. But neither do you, unless you get rid of the presumptions that we both have about big houses and grower wines. These presumptions grew out of noble ideas, but we might not need them anymore, as we become more sophisticated drinkers who can think for ourselves.

Visiting Champagne Marie-Noëlle Ledru in Ambonnay

It was 5 pm and getting dark, and it was raining when we parked in front of Marie-Noëlle Ledru's house in Ambonnay.

We had already made two visits that day and honestly, I was looking forward to relaxing, eating dinner, drinking some wine. Tired, cold, and standing in the rain, we still couldn't help but stop to admire her simple and lovely house.

The walls are made of chalk, just like most of the houses in Ambonnay, she told us. You can see it in the picture above - a spot of wall does not have an outer coating and the chalk is exposed.

We went inside and warmed up by the fireplace before heading next door to her cellars and winery.
Ledru disgorges every bottle she makes by hand. This is a lot of work, very repetitive. A neighbor helps her, she said. There is a little "hutch," if you will, that catches the capsule and yeast plugs.

Then the bottles are inserted into this contraption that dispenses liquor for dosage.

Ledru hand riddles her wines, too. When you drink a bottle of Ledru wine, you know that she handled it at every aspect, from grape to press to tank to bottle, and then she riddled the bottle and disgorged it herself too.

Instead of attempting to piece together a suitable introduction to her wines, I will instead reprint one paragraph from Peter Liem's overview of the estate on ChampagneGuide.net:

Ledru owns five hectares in Ambonnay and one in Bouzy, with a total of 30 different parcels. All of the vineyards are planted with cover crops and tilled, and she uses no herbicides or insecticides, seeking to work her vines as naturally as possible. The same sensibility extends to the cellar, where she makes the wines without filtration, without cold-stabilization and without any sulfur at disgorgement. Fermentation is all in stainless steel and enameled steel tanks, for their neutrality, and the malolactic is allowed for all wines. “I do the malo because for me it’s natural,” she says. The wines are aged for a respectably long time on their lees, averaging about three years for the brut sans année and five years for the vintage wines, and all disgorgement is done by hand, in a fashion not dissimilar to how it might have been done two or three generations ago. Ledru only bottles about half of her production, meaning that there’s very little wine to go around, and the other half is sold to the négoce, most notably to the houses of Pol Roger and Deutz.

I would add to this only one thing - Ledru's production will be smaller soon, as her family seems to have reclaimed some of the vines they were renting to her.

The range begins with a non-vintage Brut and Extra Brut, the same wine but with longer aging on the lees. I had never had the NV Brut before and I was very impressed. It shows a bit of everything that makes her wines so good - purity and freshness, clean and ripe fruit, refinement and control, and intense vinosity. She disgorged a bottle of the NV Brut for us, based on the great 2008 vintage. It was excellent wine, pure class, and it will be released later this year.

Then we tasted her vintage wines, beginning with the utterly delicious 2002 Brut Nature Grand Cru. This is such a lovely wine, with startling clarity and precision to the dark, dark fruit. There is great acidity and balance, and a layer of chalk runs underneath.

We drank the new release of Ledru's top wine, the Cuvée du Goulté, a Blanc de Noirs made from "the best of the best" parcels in Ambonnay. The 2006 is only the second vintage to make it to the US, I believe, and it is a great wine. Find it and buy it great. The aromas are broad and strikingly diverse, with zesty citrus peel, powerful dark fruit, earth, and salt. Beautifully balanced and just delicious on the palate, and this wine seemed to me that it has a whole lot in store for those who wait.

Ledru's blended rosé is special too, as it is made with her still red wine, which is delicious in its own right. I do not remember the vintage that the rosé we tasted is based on, but it was aromatically alluring, spicy, well balanced, and so very drinkable.

All the time we tasted, by the way, Marie-Noëlle Ledru sat across from us, near the fireplace with her cat on her lap.

We ended our tasting by begging to sample Ledru's Ambonnay Rouge, a wine that she didn't make in 2010 because of low yields. Not enough Pinot to make Coteaux Champenois in 2010, according to several of the producers we visited. Vincent Laval, for example, made a rosé instead (so delicious that it was painful). This is the wine that Ledru uses to make her blended rosé. Ledru's 2008 Ambonnay Rouge was broad and airy on the nose, with spicy and floral nuances that complicated the rich fruit. Elegant and spare, this wine is so perfectly balanced that it will fool those who are not paying attention into thinking that is simple. It is not! It's beauty lies, in part, in its complete harmony and seamlessness.

I've had Ledru's wines before and always enjoyed them, but his visit helped me to understand why Peter has been trumpeting the quality of Ledru's wines for so long. And the amazing thing is that unlike some other small estates making wonderful Champagne, Ledru's wines are not expensive. Cuvée du Goulté, her top wine, a world class Blanc de Noirs, will not run you more than $65 in NYC. If you want to try them and are having trouble finding them, Bonhomie Wine Imports brings them to the east coast and Triage Wines brings (brought?) them to the west coast.

A Trend Toward Single-Vineyard Wine in Champagne?

The hills of Champagne, as in Burgundy, are divided into many individually named vineyards, some containing more than one lieu-dit, or named parcel. In Burgundy the decision was made a long time ago to bottle the wines from each vineyard separately, and we can compare Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Suchots to Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Beaux-Monts, or to any other of the 14 or so 1er Cru vineyards in that village.

Champagne houses, in general, followed a different path. Champagne is a blended wine, mostly. Wines from different vineyards within a village, and from different villages altogether, wines from different vintages are blended. Although this tradition clearly hasn't hurt the quality of the wines, their reputation around the world, or the price they command, it is probably one of the issues that create questions for some people about the degree to which Champagne expresses terroir.

I am certainly not the person you should look to for the latest news in Champagne, but it seems to me as though there is a trend towards single-vineyard wines, particularly among young producers. Makes perfect sense, when you think about it. As grower Champagne continues to gain in popularity, the producers of these wines can offer new products to their expanding audience, especially when those products further extend part of the grower ethos - that of expressing terroir.

I began to think about this during our visit with Alexandre Chartogne of Champagne Chartogne-Taillet. After lots of tasting in the cellar we were back in the comfortable and warm reception room, tasting through the current lineup of wines. I remembered that Chartogne-Taillet makes a Blanc de Blancs, but we weren't drinking it. When I asked if he still makes it, Alexandre said that it is now bottled as Les Heurtebises, the vineyard it comes from.

The next morning I thought of this again with Vincent Laval in the cellars at Champagne Georges Laval, as Vincent told us about the conditions in Les Chênes and Les Hautes-Chèvres, the vineyards that produce his single-vineyard Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Laval's estate is tiny, producing no more than 10,000 bottles per year, and yet he bottles these wines separately. And they command very high prices - at least $150 per bottle.

I thought of this again later that day, tasting with Raphaël Bérèche. Beginning with the 2007 vintage, he makes an old vines Pinot Meunier from the vineyard of Les Misy in Port à Binson. It is called Vallée de la Marne Rive Gauche, and Bérèche's intentions are clearly announced on the wine's label, as the place of origin is far more prominent than the family name. The back label, by the way, contains information on the vineyard, disgorgement date, and everything else that we might want to know.

Around this time I asked Peter what he thinks of this trend, if it is in fact a trend. "I've been meaning to write something about that," he said. That's fine - we can wait together to read whatever it is Peter has to say on this issue.

The next day I thought of this again, but in an entirely different context. At Philipponnat, a larger house, we drank Clos des Goisses, one of the most celebrated wines of Champagne, and also a single-vineyard wine. The house could theoretically blend much of the grapes into non-vintage wines, use some for a vintage wine, and sell many more bottles much more quickly than they do with Clos des Goisses, which ages on its lees for way beyond the required three years. But Charles Philipponnat and the others at the house understand how special the vineyard is, and bottle it separately.

And later that day at Salon, when Export Director Jean-Baptiste (Tista) Cristini showed me around the gorgeous house and property. We looked at a picture frame that contained a menu from Maxim's in Paris, from 1928. It reads "Salon 1921 - Mesnil Nature, cuvée pure de raisins blancs." This means "Pure Mesnil, Blanc de Blancs." There were other wines offered on the menu, but none of them mentioned the place of origin. I guess Mesnil has been considered great terroir for a long time, and Salon recognized the power of marketing the single village wine.

My point, I guess, is that perhaps this is nothing new, this trend toward single-vineyard wines in Champagne. If it is, in fact, a trend. Maybe it's a cycle and we're approaching a single-vineyard section of the wheel. The real question, in the end, might be why are there more single-vineyard wines appearing in Champagne, and what impact will they have? As I mentioned before, we can wait together for Peter on those questions.

Storing Champagne

Did you know that there are several types of closures used for secondary fermentation in Champagne? And several closures used by producers to store Champagne as it ages? I suppose this is not shocking, but I hadn't really thought about it until I saw bottles in cellars and started asking questions. Here are some of the things I found out.

Vin clair, the base wine of Champagne, undergoes secondary fermentation in bottle. Typically the bottles are closed with capsules, like with a soda bottle.

The bottles in this photo are Vincent Laval's, of Champagne Georges Laval. Non-vintage wines must be stored on their lees for a minimum of 15 months, vintage wines for a minimum of three years, and then they are disgorged and closed with a cork (and there are several types of corks used here, but that is a different story), and shipped out for the world to drink.

There are producers who prefer to ferment their wines under cork. Raphaël Bérèche of Bérèche Père et Fils is one of them. The cap does not allow for any appreciable exchange of gases, and Bérèche feels that his wines are better when fermented and aged under cork, allowing minute quantities of air to enter the bottle.

I asked him if he has compared cap and cork fermented wines with a decent amount of post-disgorgement aging, and he has. "They evolve differently," he says, and he prefers cork. Fermenting under cork requires much more work in the cellar, however, and Bérèche currently ferments only the top wine created by his father called Reflet D'Antan, and his own new wines called Instant and Vallée de la Marne Rive Gauche. The rest of the range is fermented under capsule.

Champagne producers, like most wine producers anywhere I would imagine, hold back wines for themselves to watch their progression over time. Sometimes these wines are disgorged and then aged as you or I would age Champagne (except our cellars are not underground and cavernous) - in a cool dark place, sealed with a cork and a wire cage. I saw plenty of these bottles as I toured various cellars. Some are really quite old, and preserve the history of their family's work as wine makers. These are bottles made by Marie-Noëlle Ledru's father Michel (I think that was his name) in the 1950's.

Some producers store old wines that have not been disgorged. They are sealed under caps and kept fully inverted, stored sur pointe, as these bottles of 1982 Réserve Millésimée in the Philipponnat cellars.

The interesting thing with bottles stored sur pointe is that the lees remain in the bottle for the length of storage. Think about that - if the wine in question is from the 1982 vintage, the wine has had 28 years of lees contact. That would probably be too much lees contact, except that the bottles are riddled and the lees is collected in the neck before the bottles are stored sur pointe, so that the lees have far less surface area and they simply protect the wine from oxidation.

Drinking a bottle of old Champagne that has been disgorged and stored on cork is as as simple as removing the cork and pouring the wine. On this trip we were lucky enough to drink several old wines that had been stored this way. Rodolphe Péters of Champagne Pierre Péters was absurdly generous and opened several old bottles for us.

The 1990 Pierre Péters Blanc de Blancs Brut Millésimé was delicious and showed intriguing mushroom and sous-bois aromas, and felt young and energetic on the palate. It was perfectly balanced and seemed like it could live on for another decade at least, probably longer. The 1973 Pierre Péters Blanc de Blancs Brut Millésimé was one of the finest old bottles of Champagne that I have ever tasted. The wine had a beautiful orange color, and incredibly vibrant aromas and flavors. Chamomile, mandarin, honey, flowers...but those are just words that don't really do the wine justice. It was a tremendously beautiful old bottle.

Then Rodolphe Péters, for reasons that I still do not comprehend, decided to open a bottle of 1921 Camille Péters Champagne Demi-sec. This was the last bottle in his family's cellars. It was dark amber in color and tasted like the freshest Madeira, which is to say, delicious.

The cork was a work of art.

Drinking a bottle of old Champagne that has been stored sur pointe is a bit more difficult. The wine must be disgorged first, a process made to look simple by the producers, but I have no doubt that I would destroy a wine attempting to disgorge it. A wooden and metal tool that is probably exactly the same as it was 75 years ago is used to pry off the capsule.

First the bottle is held upside down, and obviously it is a good idea not to disturb the lees in the neck.

As the bottle is tilted upward the capsule is pried off and the pressure in the bottle forces the lees plug to fly out of the bottle. A little bit of wine is lost too. This process is called disgorging à la volée. No dosage is added to wines disgorged à la volée and from what I am told, the wine is best when consumed immediately. On this trip we drank several bottles that were disgorged à la volée, including the bottle being disgorged by Charles Philipponnat in the above photos, the 1979 Philipponnat Grand Blanc, a Blanc de Blancs made from Côte de Blancs and Montaigne de Reims grapes. The wine was just delicious, complex and deep, and I don't know if it is because it is a little younger, because the 1979 vintage ages differently, or if storing sur pointe is the reason, but it felt structurally younger than wines that had been disgorged long ago, as if its inner core had not aged as quickly as its outer flavors and aromas.

It would be fascinating to one day drink examples of wines aged on cork compared to the same wines disgorged à la volée. I suppose that means I will have to go back to Champagne some day.

Vin Clair and Champagne Terroirs

To really know the taste of wines from a certain place - this is not an easy thing for most of us. If you are fortunate enough to drink many examples over many years, it becomes possible. When trying to learn about terroir, Champagne presents challenges that Burgundy, for example, does not. Although the majority of Burgundy wines are of the regional or villages classification, single vineyard bottles are so widely available that your local wine shop doesn't have to be particularly creative to stock them. There are nowhere near as many single vineyard Champagnes on the market, although the number is growing. Most often when we drink Champagne, we drink a blend of wines from several parcels of several vineyards, perhaps even from several different villages and vintages. Add that to the fact that Champagne must be crafted in the cellar in a way that most still wines are not, it is easy to understand why some people do not consider Champagne to be a wine of terroir.

It may be understandable, but it is simply wrong. Just because it is challenging to discern Champagne terroir does not mean that Champagne is not a wine of terroir. It requires more experience, and I would say more commitment on the taster's part, to understand Champagne terroir. I most certainly do not understand it and I drink as much Champagne as I can. One of the best things about being in Champagne recently was that I had the opportunity to vastly accelerate my learning about the different terroirs.

Vincent Laval of Georges Laval pouring vin clair - Chardonnay from Les Chênes.

If you visit a Champagne producer a few months after the harvest but before the following spring, and if you are lucky, you will have the chance to taste vin clair, the base wine that eventually becomes sparkling wine. Some producers vinify all of their parcels separately and you might taste them one after the other, listening as they describe the characteristics of that particular place, comparing the taste of a Chardonnay from an the middle of an east-facing slope with hardly any topsoil to a Chardonnay from the same village, but from a sandy parcel lower down on a south-facing slope. The wines smell, taste, and feel different from one another.

Tasting and then blending of vins clair has typically been the purview of the wine maker and his or her team, a behind the scenes affair. Peter Liem told me that it was only about ten years ago when critics began to taste vins clair. "I want to truly understand the wines," he said. "To do that I need to taste them from the beginning as vin clair, before following their development in bottle." Peter's post on his old Besotted Ramblings blog demonstrates the kind of learning one can do when tasting vin clair.

The first estate that Peter and I visited last week was Chartogne-Taillet in Merfy, and the first thing we did was taste vins clair. Alexandre Chartogne dipped a pipette into a barrel of Chardonnay from Les Heurtebises, a vineyard of sand and limestone. This is the base wine that becomes Chartogne-Taillet's Blanc de Blancs.

We tasted Pinot Noir from Les Orizeaux that is eventually blended with Chardonnay from a great vineyard called Chemin de Reims to make the house's prestige wine, Cuvée Fiacre. And most instructively for me, we spent a lot of time with the Meunier from Les Barres. This wine comes from 55 year old ungrafted vines on sandy soils, and I found it to be highly distinctive. The aromas reminded me of Tarlant's La Vignes d'Antan, another wine made from ungrafted old vines on sandy soils. Sounds reasonable enough until you consider that Tarlant is located in Oueilly in the Marne Valley and Chartogne-Taillet is way up north in the Montagne de Reims. And La Vigne d'Antan is made of Chardonnay, not Meunier! Maybe there is something about ungrafted vines on sandy soils...

I had a similar experience when tasting vins clair at Champagne Philipponnat in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ. Philipponnat is the sole owner of one of the most famous vineyards in Champagne, the Clos des Goisses.
Clos des Goisses is a very well exposed severely steep vineyard and is one of the warmer sites in Champagne. Export Manager Vianney Gravereaux said that the grapes regularly achieve 12% potential alcohol, compared with between 10 and 10.5% in most of Champagne. It is a large vineyard at 5.5 hectares, long and narrow with many different parcels, a bit more than half Pinot Noir and the rest Chardonnay. There is not much topsoil over the abundant chalk.

We were lucky enough to taste two vins clair from the Clos des Goisses, a Pinot and a Chardonnay. Although the character of the grape was discernible in both wines, they shared a powerful floral fragrance and an exquisite depth and richness while maintaining great detail and finesse. This, not the grapes, defined the character of both wines.

All of this said, what strikes me the most in reflecting on these experiences is that in the end, I learned how much that I don't know. For example, how to translate this new understanding of certain Champagne terroirs via vin clair, to understanding what I am tasting and smelling when drinking a bottle of the finished product?

Back From Champagne

I just returned from several days in Champagne! In Peter Liem, I had the finest tour guide imaginable. I'll share stories and photos in the coming days, but first a few tidbits from our one day in Paris.

The French love Sharon Stone. This movie poster appeared in every metro station I passed through. She is something like 65 years old, but in France she's still a leading lady.

I hope that I never stop feeling thrilled by the streets of Paris. It was a Sunday and instead of dealing with crowds at museums, we pounded the pavement and devoted ourselves to the gastronomic arts. We ate lunch at Le Comptoir de Relais in the 6th Arrondissement. At lunch this place specializes in French "grandma" cuisine, country food that although rustic, is beautifully served and completely delicious. At night this is a "gastronomique" restaurant with far more lofty aspirations, and the few tables are booked two months in advance.

We ate several great things at Le Comptoir, my favorite among them a thick slice of pork foot and green lentil pâté served with an equally thick slice of bread, pickled red onion, and horseradish cream.

The wine list is very good at Le Comptoir, offering interesting things at all price points. The 2009 Houillon/Overnoy Arbois Pupillon Poulsard was truly fantastic, one of the best versions of this wine that I've drunk. And it was perfect with the food. This is a wine that might show best before it travels over the ocean. No sulfur added, after all.

We burned off lunch by walking all the way back to our friend's apartment in the 20th. That way we would have room for dinner at Le Verre Volé. I first read about this place on Bert Celce's Wine Terroirs several years ago and I've always wanted to go. We decided that we would drink Champagne. Vouette et Sorbée Extra Brut Blanc D'Argile was delicious, although oddly not as great as the bottles I've had here in the States. Peter guessed that it might have been in the very cold refrigerator for too long.

I ate a great plate of sardines en escabeche followed by an Andouillette. This earthy* sausage is made of tripe, and as a specialty of the city of Troyes, is not as odd of a pairing with Champagne as you might think. I enjoyed it, but it I was jet lagged and the sausage was incredibly pungent, and I had to throw in the towel at about two-thirds of the way through.

No towels were thrown in on the Champagne, however. Selosse is part of (a leader of?) what I'm learning to think of as a new school in Champagne. The wines are barrel fermented and the style is quite oxidative, which to my palate underscores their incredibly vinous depth. This bottle of Initial was one of the best Selosse wines that I've ever had - amazingly fresh and vibrant with very clean and long salty and chalky flavors. When the wine shows this kind of freshness, it balances and elevates the rich and oxidative character, and it was a truly special bottle.

Early the next morning Peter and I drove to Champagne to begin three days of non-stop visiting, tasting, and drinking. I learned more about Champagne in these three days than in the entirety of the past several years. More on that coming soon...


* "earthy" in this case is a euphemism. The Andouillette offered many pungent smells, one of which was poop.