Champagne and Grape Character

I often find it quite difficult to identify the grape blend when drinking Champagne. I can think of many times when my guess was way off base. And even when I am drinking a familiar wine where I already know the grape composition, the grape character is not always as prominent for me as are other elements of the wine.

This is probably a good thing, from the producer's perspective - they are trying to make a seamless wine that expresses something of a place. If the drinker feels "this is so very much about Chardonnay," that's probably not what the wine maker was going for.

But it can be satisfying sometimes to drink a Champagne, and amidst all of the other sensations, to get a clear sense of the grape blend. Here are a few wines I drank recently that I found to show a particularly prominent varietal character. Not that it makes them better wines, I just find it interesting.

(2004) Larmandier-Bernier Terre de Vertus Brut Nature Blanc de Blancs Premier Cru, $55-73, Louis/Dressner Selections / Polaner Imports. This has had several years of post-disgorgement aging. The current release is 2006, I believe. It's funny to use this wine as an example, as according to ChampagneGuide.net it comes from a single terroir: "three adjacent parcels totaling 2.5 hectares, located on the chalky side of the village along the road to Le Mesnil." You'd think that this single terroir wine made in the incredibly pure Larmandier-Bernier style would be all about a particular place. And perhaps more experienced or more careful drinkers would find terroir to be the most prominent aspect of this wine. For me, with brunch on Christmas morning and then savored with BrooklynLady over the rest of the afternoon, this wine was a glorious expression of Chardonnay. Gentle and completely harmonious, the salty minerality of its youth is now in the background. The finish is delicately floral and very fragrant, and the sensation that lingers for me is pure, ripe Chardonnay.

NV Roger Coulon Champagne Tradition Brut, price unknown (this was a gift), Steven Berardi Selections, Elizabeth Imports. The Coulon estate is located in Vrigny, a place where Meunier does very well. From what I've read, this wine is only 50% Meunier, but it was defined by Meunier for the first 45 minutes or so. Broad marzipan and orange peel aromas, exuberant and expansive. I am confident that I would have pegged it as a Meunier-based wine had I drank it blind withint the first hour open. After an hour or so open, the wine lost some of its Meunier exuberance but gained harmony and precision. It was delicious in both incarnations.

NV Billiot Champagne Brut Reserve Grand Cru, $45, Terry Theise Selections/Michael Skurnik Imports. I think I've had this wine more often than I've had any other Champagne, and I always enjoy it. It smacks of pure dark Pinot fruit, juicy and rich, but completely in control. I had a glass the other night with friends, and although I was distracted by a hundred different things, I remember at one point, after putting my nose in the glass, thinking "wow - that is indisputably and deliciously Pinot Noir." Some people feel that Billiot's Brut Reserve is a bit high in dosage. I think it works this way. Somehow the relatively high dosage brings out the joyfulness of the Pinot fruit.

Blind Tasting 15 Champagnes

Alex Halberstadt, a Brooklyn-based writer who covers wine for The Faster Times, an online newspaper, recently invited me to his house to participate in a blind tasting of Champagne. There were 9 of us in total, and 15 wines. Not bad for a random Monday night.

The point of tasting blind is to remove information that can bias the taster during the experience of tasting. But how much information should be removed? Obviously, tasters do not know the identity of the wines they taste. But there are varying degrees of "blind." Imagine, for example, that you wanted to do a tasting of Pinot Noir with friends, and your idea is to compare new world wines to old world wines. Do you tell people the theme and ask them to categorize the wines as they taste? Do you instead tell them only that it is a Pinot tasting, and see where the discussion goes? Do you tell people that they are drinking two types of Pinot, but not tell them what types? There are many ways to do this, and each has its merits.

We knew nothing whatsoever about the Champagnes we tasted - Alex decided to share the theme of the tasting only after we discussed the wines. We went through all 15 wines and then discussed each one. As you would expect with a group of 9 people tasting of 15 wines, there were many different opinions. But there were a few things that everyone seemed to agree on: no one loved the wines as a group. Everyone found a few wines to like, but as a group, no one was overly excited. When asked what we thought of the overall quality of the wines, Garrett Oliver, the brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery, said "They were fine, but I drank some great Champagnes last week, and none of these stands up to any of those."

I felt the same way - there were several wines I liked, but as a group I was not terribly impressed. I felt that the wines lacked any kind of soil character. None of them were chalky. And none of them showed any real individuality. They actually resembled each other a lot in terms of character and flavor profile. Maybe this was a symptom of drinking 15 Champagnes in a row, maybe not. What had Alex done, here? What were we tasting?

I had an idea about halfway through, but I wasn't sure. At the end of the discussion, Alex said "Bloggers and wine writers all seem to be writing about grower Champagne now, and you never read anything about the other wines. I thought it would be interesting to do a tasting of the Grand Marque Champagnes, the wines you are most likely to encounter in any given store." I understood immediately why Alex kept the theme a secret. If I knew that I were tasting these 15 wines, I would have been biased. Not that I would dislike them automatically - I'm a more honest taster than that, but I would have approached them differently, with low expectations. Alex wisely allowed us to approach these with whatever expectations we as individuals bring to a tasting. I, for one, want to like the wines at a blind tasting. And I found some things to like in this tasting.

Here are the wines we tasted, all non-vintage wines, presumably disgorged and released recently:

1) Piper-Heidsieck

2) Henriot

3) Deutz

4) Pol Roger Pure (this was a mistake - Alex meant for this to be Bollinger)

5) Gosset

6) Taittinger

7) Pol Roger

8) Delamotte

9) Lanson

10) Veuve-Clicquot

11) Laurent-Perrier

12) Charles Heidsieck

13) Louis Roederer

14) Moet Brut Imperial

15) Alfred Gratien

I liked the first wine I tasted better than anything else, the Piper-Heidsieck. It felt like it had been bottled at low pressure, it had lovely dark fruit, it had finesse, and it was very expressive. I loved it. I remember thinking, "Could this be a Cedric Bouchard wine?" I wonder if this wine been the 8th wine in the lineup, whether or not I would have liked it as much. By wine #8, I understood that I wasn't crazy about whatever it was we were tasting - the "I'm about to taste 15 Champagnes, and I love Champagne" magic had worn off. But I liked it enough during this tasting so that I will make a point of drinking it again.

My other favorites included Roederer, Henriot, Pol Roger, Taittinger, and Lanson. I would gladly drink a glass of any of those wines, should they be offered to me. But I don't think that I'm ready to start using any of my already meager Champagne budget to buy these wines. Before doing that, I'd like to do a blind tasting that includes these wines and an equal number of wines from producers like Boulard, Billiot, Diebolt-Vallois, and Brigandat. That would be most interesting, especially if I didn't know the theme while tasting.

I will also confidently tell you that the worst wine of the tasting, and almost everyone agreed on this, was the Moet White Star. It was just very bad.

I'm so glad to have participated in this - it was a great idea, Alex. It's silly to dismiss wines because they're not popular (an odd thing to say about Grand Marque Champagne, but I mean popular among the wine circles I hang out in), but I think we all do it. I tend to be dismissive of exactly these Champagnes, and perhaps I shouldn't be. I really liked that Piper-Heidsieck. Maybe I'll buy one and drink it next to a comparable grower Champagne, both served blind.

NV Champagne from '05 and '06 - Thoughts on the Terry Theise Champagne Tasting

I went to the big Michael Skurnik / Terry Theise tasting last week, the only tasting in NYC where one can gaze upon Robert De Niro's father while sampling wine. I arrived quite late and had nowhere near enough time to taste everything. So I focused instead on the producers I like the most, trying to get to know the new versions of their wines.

Many of the non-vintage Champagnes are based on 2005 grapes, a very ripe year, as it was in most of the wine making world. Peter Liem of ChampagneGuide.net said that at one time he thought 2005 juice will make for very good non-vintage wines, in general. Now he's not so sure, as some wines are showing overripe flavors. There were also plenty of NV wines based on 2006 grapes, another very warm vintage, but with a cool and wet August that perhaps allows the finished wines to show better balance and freshness than the 2005's. Where am I getting all of this Champagne vintage and climate information from?

Please let me interrupt this post to tell you something very important: Peter has added new features to what is already the best online Champagne guide - there is now a 'vintages' section that provides detailed info on Champagne vintages, an 'articles' section where he will publish a feature length article every month, and most excitingly, for me anyway, a blog. Peter hasn't been writing about Champagne anymore on Besotted Ramblings, but he's blogging again on his new site and the posts are as fun, interesting, and chock full of insider's information as you would expect.

Sorry, back to the Theise Champagne Tasting. After the tasting it was interesting to compare my notes on wines based on '05 to those based on '06. Here is what I found:

The Gaston Chiquet NV Brut Tradition was based on 2005 (80%) and was very nice wine, although it did not seem to have the energy that I remember it having. Plenty of ripe dark fruit, but this wine is 45% Meunier and it felt a bit too spread out, its frame too malleable. The Chartogne-Taillet NV Brut Cuvée St Anne was based on 2005 (80%) and for the first time ever, I was not terribly impressed with the wine. I liked the nose a lot, with its flowers, ripe fruit, and chalky earth. But the palate felt a bit clunky, without the focus and clarity that I am used to.

The Pierre Gimonnet Brut NV 1er Cru Blanc de Blancs was better than I remember though, with a delicately focused nose of flowers and chalk. It felt both lacy and ample on the palate, and although I don't have terribly high expectations for this particular wine, I really liked this version. It was based on 2006 grapes, as it turned out. The other NV Blanc de Blancs that I liked a lot was the Pehu-Simonet NV Blanc de Blancs, this version almost entirely 2006 (90%). The nose was just gorgeous, with salty white flowers, very gentle, and the grapes are all from Mesnil, as with a famous Champagne you may have heard of, called Salon. The Lallement NV Brut smelled great, with clean dark fruit and a brooding earthiness, and it tasted great too, very well balanced. It is 80% 2006 grapes.

The interesting thing is, my favorites turned out to be more of a combination of 2006 and 2005 grapes. The René Geoffroy Brut NV Expression is always one of my favorite NV wines. This version is 65% 2006 and 35% 2005 grapes, and although it is more overtly fruity than in the recent past, I thought it was complex, well balanced, and just lovely. And the Henri Billiot NV Brut Reserve is 50% 2006, 25%2005, and 25% 2004, and it was delicious, open and inviting with ripe dark fruit and great energy. This wine always improves dramatically with a year or so of bottle age, and I'm curious to see what will happen with this particular version. Perhaps the folks in Champagne were onto something, with all of this blending.

Two Weeks of Incredible Champagne

I used to write about sparkling wine every Friday in a sets of posts that I called Friday Night Bubbles. Every week for over a year, typically alternating between Champagne and other sparkling wines. It got expensive, but what made me stop this series was the fact that I wasn't satisfied with the quality of most sparkling wines at the $20-$25 price point. I decided that I'd rather spend my $25 on whatever wine I think is best, not necessarily a sparkling wine.

And so my sparkling wine consumption has gone way down, Champagne obviously included. In the past two weeks, though, I've had more top notch Champagne than in all of the past year, I would say. These things come in waves, I guess. I know it's boring to read lists of "The Great Wines I Just Drank," but please - allow me to share about some of these. These are rare and expensive wines that I may never have another chance to drink, and they are worth talking about.

I was in Seattle last week for work (thanks for having me back here, by the way). I know no one in Seattle, and I had business all day but nothing at night. I did take myself out to dinner one night at this place, and it was quite nice. But a million times more fun was dinner at my new friend Brian's house, a guy I met through another friend I met because of this blog. And they say that sitting in front of your computer is anti-social! Brian works for Triage Wines, one of the better importer/distributors on the west coast. He invited a few other Seattle wine-types, made a beautiful dinner of schnitzel and other goodies, and we opened what might in some circles be called an excessive amount of wine. I could tell you about the three 1998 Rieslings we had with dinner, including the FX Pichler Unendlich, but this is supposed to be about Champagne. So instead I'll tell you about Sugot-Feneuil, a producer I had never heard of. Brian served the 1998 Brut Blanc de Blancs as an aperitif, and it was just lovely, so full flavored, and also so elegant. But this was a fleeting experience, as apparently the grower is deceased and the vines have been sold to a big house.

That was only the beginning. One of Brian's friends brought a bottle of 1997 Larmandier-Bernier Special Club, I think the last Special Club vintage that Larmandier-Bernier did. This wine took a while to open up, but when it did it was a well balanced wine with rich nutty fruit and a mouth-coating texture. I think that it was starting to truly shine after we had moved on to other wines. And how about this - Brian went downstairs to his cellar (normal people can afford to live in houses in Seattle, apparently) and returned with not one, but two bottles by Vouette et Sorbée. We drank the Saignée de Sorbée (photo courtesy of Peter Liem) and the Blanc d'Argile, both 2006's, although they are not labeled as vintage wines. Both of these wines were entirely remarkable, impossible to overstate the level of quality here. The fruit in the rosé was utterly beautiful, almost impossibly fresh and alive, sweet and perfumed with subtle spices. Like all Vouette et Sorbée wines, this has no dosage - imagine how perfectly ripe these grapes must be! The other thing that I found striking about the rosé was its texture - full and rich, but exquisitely detailed and fine. Such a joy to drink. Peter and I drank the 2005 Saignée de Sorbée merely days before this Seattle dinner, and it was also a great, but an entirely different wine. The 2005 was not as much about fruit, it was completely saline and pungently rocky and earthy, and it was great with our roast bonito. The 2006 was a far more hedonistic wine that offered immediate and intense pleasure, but I wonder which wine will be better in 10 years...The Blanc d'Argile was also great, with that same brilliant fruit and texture, but I was so smitten with the rosé that I could barely pay attention to anything else. Thank you again Brian, and your welcoming and generous friends too.

The funny part is, you probably think that's all the great Champagne I've had recently. Not at all true, friends. I went to Alice Feiring's house the other night for her Champagne tasting, a semi-blind (we saw the list of wines, but drank them blind) look at a handful of wines with the idea of discussing whether or not they represent good value. I'll leave the results of the value discussion for Alice to print in her upcoming Wall Street Journal article, but I'll tell you that the wines in general showed tremendously well. I learned that Drappier makes very good wines - the nose on the 2002 Grande Sendrée was fantastic, rich and nutty with a focused depth of clean fruit, intriguingly orange-y in character. And I confirmed for myself that I am a huge fan of both Billiot's and Lallement's basic NV cuvées. That Larmandier-Bernier's Terre de Vertus smells and tastes of seashells, and that the 2004 Raymond Boulard Les Rachais Extra Brut will be excellent in about 8 years. Boulard's wines, in my humble opinion, might be the best value in the NYC Champagne market.

The three "S"s - a part of any balanced diet.

Alice somehow stocked her Blanc de Blancs lineup with 1997 Salon, and two different Selosse wines, Substance and VO. Yes, I drank Substance twice in two weeks - very extravagant. When I drank the VO I thought it was Substance, as the nose was immediately reminiscent of the wine I drank with Peter the week before. Wine maker's stamp, I guess. The '97 Salon took a while to unwind, but when it did it was just gorgeous, so expansive and richly satisfying in the mouth, and so perfectly balanced.

Alright, that's enough, I'm running out of gas - just excited to be back, I guess.

Friday Night Bubbles

NV Benoît Lahaye Brut, $40, Jeffrey Alpert Selections. Last summer I was in Portland with my wife on a quick vacation and we had dinner with Peter Liem and some of his friends. He brought a few truly special bottles of wine from France for this dinner, one of which was the 2002 Benoît Lahaye Brut Champagne Millésime. This wine was so delicious that I made a promise to myself to buy Lahaye's wines whenever I could find them.

Turns out that finding them is no small feat. I do not mean to say this rudely, but have you ever heard of Jeffrey Alpert Selections? I haven't. There is no website for the importer that I could find - an interweb search turned up more Herb Alpert (the genius musician behind, among other things, the cantina scene music from Star Wars, at the bar in Mos Eisley) than Jeffrey Alpert. But I finally found a NYC store that sells the NV Brut and I pounced. The vintage wine, the Brut Nature, and the other cuvées - nope, not to be found around here, which is such a shame.

Benoît Lahaye's estate is located in the village of Bouzy in the Montagne de Reims, in Pinot Noir country. There are some great growers and producers in Bouzy, such as Andre Clouet, Camille Saves, and Paul Bara. Among wines that I've had at home with dinner (where you can linger over a meal and watch the wine grow up over the course of an evening), this NV Brut from Lahaye is the finest Bouzy wine that I've ever tasted. I've never had a Paul Bara wine, and I haven't tasted the entire lineup of wines from Saves or Clouet, but I've drank some of their wines, and I think that Lahaye's NV Brut is just better. This version is, anyway, which I am guessing is based on 2005 grapes, bottled in 2006, and disgorged in August of 2008 based on the hard-to-spot code on the back label that reads "08 2008." Again - give us more info on the labels please...

The best description of Benoît Lahaye is again on Peter Liem's website, but I will summarize: Benoît Lahaye's vineyards are farmed organically and his wines are made naturally with minimal intervention. The estate is small at under 5 hectares, and yet Lahaye vinifies individual parcels seperately in order to produce the best possible blends. This wine is 85% Pinot Noir and the rest Chardonnay, using 30% reserve wines. It is such a beautiful wine, really stunning. The nose is airy and pure, very gentle, and reveals layers of ripe fruit, roast nuts, and minerals. It is vinous and intense, round and rich, ever so slightly smokey. This is one to get lost in, and I refused to drink the last bit so I could keep smelling it. The fruit is generous and ripe on the palate - anyone who thinks that grapes don't ripen in Champagne should drink this wine. The fruit is completely infused with chalk, and there is a racy streak of acidity that cuts through and cleanses the palate. The finish is fragrant and long, and tickles the cheeks. And it's clear that I opened it too young, as there is ample structure and acidity and although the wine is completely delicious, it seems like it hasn't fully discovered its inner harmony.
If it sounds like I'm waxing rhapsodic about this wine, I am. It's a true beauty, one of the best NV Pinot Noir based Champs that I've had. And it's interesting to compare this to, say the NV Billiot Brut from the neighboring village of Ambonnay, also a grand cru village. I love Billiot's wines, but whereas they seem more exuberant and muscular to me, Lahaye's wine seems more controlled, with more finesse, yet equally intense. I'll have to test that theory one day by drinking them together.

Friday Night Bubbles

Most of this post already appeared on Jeremy Parzon's Do Bianchi. Sorry to repeat, but whaddaya want from me?!? I have a five-day old and a 2 year old. I'm like a walking dead man.

1999 Henri Billiot Brut, $56, Terry Theise Selections / Michael Skurnik Imports. Billiot's wines are really a treat. Laetitia (Henri's granddaughter, I believe) is in charge now, and there are still fewer than 4,000 cases per year of the 5 wines Billiot makes. Located in the Grand Cru village of Ambonnay in the Montagne de Reims, Billiot's wines are comprised mostly of Pinot Noir, and the fruit is rich and joyous .The basic non-vintage Brut is typically excellent, although not cheap at almost $50. The rosé is one of the better ones I know of that is not made in the saignée method. Billiot adds still 15+ year old solera Pinot Noir to the blend to create the rosé, and it's absolutely complex and delicious. Cuvée Laetitia is the house's top wine (along with the newer and in my opinion, less successful Cuvée Julie), also a solera wine, and is oddly, mostly Chardonnay.

Billiot adds little or no dosage, achieving sufficient ripeness on the vine to do without. These are wines, like most good Champagnes, that really show better if you wait a while after disgorgement to open them. The bottle we drank was disgorged in October of 2007, and I'm glad we gave it a year. I've had the NV Brut earlier in it's post-disgorgement life and it was a bit disjointed, the fruit in particular just fell off at the end.

I think that when buying Billiot's wines, it's worth it to spend a couple more bucks to buy Billiot's vintage wines as opposed to the basic NV Brut. This one, the 1999, is the wine we opened as an aperitif with friends before Christmas dinner, the night before our daughter was born. It exceeded expectations - so graceful and controlled, such exuberant fruit, so rich and broad, yet with refined elegance. the texture is lush and fine, there is good acidity, and the finish really lingers with a chalk-infused fruit fragrance. This wine has a great inner core of energetic fruit, and it's just delicious. It will probably continue to improve with a few more years in a cold cellar. You might not be able to find the '99 on shelves now, but the 2002 is the new release and it may well surpass the '99 once it is ready to drink, in about 5-8 years.

Terry Theise Tasting Notes

What's the right thing to do at an enormous industry wine tasting? Do you try to taste every wine being poured? Do you find some way of narrowing the field, and taste only a subset of the wines? The answer is personal, I suppose. I used to try to taste everything but in the end I learned less that way, and did not really enjoy myself. Nowadays I try to figure out what I most want to taste before I get there.

I was invited to both the Terry Theise Selections/Skurnik Champagne Portfolio Tasting and the Louis/Dressner Selections tastings last week, invitations that I am truly grateful for. The largest and arguably the finest portfolio of grower Champagnes in the US, and the largest and finest portfolio of natural wines from France and Italy - what a treat to participate.

Both tastings, however, took place on Tuesday October 21st from noon-4:00. Admit it - that just sucks. Thoughtfully tasting everything in the Terry Theise portfolio alone is challenging enough, but to do that and then find a way to do the same thing at the Dressner tasting...that's a tall order. Luckily I had my buddy and fellow blogger David McDuff as a partner in tasting.

I did a much better job at the Theise tasting simply because I went there first. I learned that if I had to pick one Champagne producer's lineup to take to a desert island, it would be that of René Geoffroy. From top to bottom, just amazing. I re-discovered Pierre Peters and Marc Hébrart. And best of all, I am beginning to put together an understanding of terroir in Champagne. Here are some of the wines that I would buy for myself (great wine, good value) from the Theise portfolio (prices are estimates):

NV Pierre Peters Cuvée Réserve Blanc de Blancs Brut, $50. My favorite on this day of the non-vintage Côte des Blancs wines.

NV Marc Hebrart Sélection Brut, $50. Deep rich perfume, just gorgeous. 65% Pinot Noir and 35% Chardonnay. Complex, delicious, and balanced. I never see this in stores though...

NV René Geoffroy Expression Brut, $50. Heavy in the Meunier, and one of my favorite non-vintage wines of the whole portfolio. If you're skeptical of this whole grower Champagne thing, and you buy only one wine from this portfolio, try this one.
NV René Geoffroy Empreinte Brut, $60. This one is 82% Pinot Noir and it's gorgeous. Again, I've never seen it retail. Not in New York, nowhere. Please, someone...buy this wine so I can buy it.
NV René Geoffroy Cuvee Volupté Brut, $80. For the first time (I think) this is a Blanc de Blancs. It's all 2004, although it's not a vintage wine. It's a baby and it's very delicate, but it's already got a well defined and muscular physique. This will be a knockout in a few years.
2000 René Geoffroy Brut, $125. I didn't say that I'd be happy about spending the money, I just said that I would buy these wines myself. And since I buy maybe two wines at this price each year, this is a serious comment on the quality I saw in this wine at this price. This wine has no sugar in the dosage, but you might not guess that when drinking it. What a thing of beauty! It is full and deep and rich and delicate and a full-on sensory experience. If you have the money and the inclination, this is not to be missed. Will someone carry it in their store, though?
1995 René Geoffroy Cuvée de René Geoffroy Brut, $300 (magnum). Truffles and strawberries. This was the wine of the tasting for me, and although I cannot spend my own (and my wife's) $300 on a magnum, I'm hoping that the gods of wine will somehow allow me to taste this again someday.

NV Gaston Chiquet Tradition Brut, $45. Also heavy on the Meunier, and another favorite non-vintage wine. I haven't always loved this wine, but on this day it was great.

NV Margaine Brut Rosé, $55. Refined and delicate, yet bold and lovely fruit. Delicious.
2000 Margaine Special Club Blanc de Blancs Brut, $75 (but this price could be totally wrong - the book is missing information). Gorgeous mature nose of nuts and minerals, very rich.

2002 Henri Billiot Brut, $75. Just gorgeous 80% Pinot Noir deliciousness. So deep fruited and satisfying. And a keeper too - this has a long life ahead of it.

NV Lallement Brut, $55, Intense spicy fruit with a steely mineral backbone. Powerful but also delicate somehow in its purity.

NV Chartogne Taillet Cuvée Sainte Anne Brut, $45. Bring this to someone who thinks they don't like Champagne. It's a classic, well balanced, fragrant, deeply fruited wine, and delicious wine. And I've seen it, the same disorgement as in the tasting, based on 2004, with the new label, for as little as $36.
2000 Chartogne Taillet Brut, $65. Bold and rich, with a spicy depth. This is big wine, but it's well balanced and gentle.
2002 Chartogne Taillet Cuvee Fiacre Brut, $75. From their oldest vines, this wine is refined and elegant, and still pretty closed. The 2000 Fiacre that I tasted in September was much more approachable. But this will be a beauty in a few years, I suspect.

Dressner notes coming soon...

Champagne Rambling...and Tasting

I've been slowly but surely exploring Champagne in the past year or so, tasting as many as I can from both the big houses and individual growers. "Big house" refers to producers who purchase grapes from various growers and craft a Champagne that expresses a certain style that will be consistent from year to year. Examples of big house Champagne include Perrier-Jouet, Bollinger, Krug, and Duval-Leroy. "Grower Champagne" refers to wines that are crafted from grapes grown by the producer. Examples of grower Champagne include Lallement, Pierre Peters, Gaston Chiquiet, and Henri Billiot.

The distinction between "big house" and "grower" Champagne is an economic one. If a grower can profit from making wine (assuming they want to make wine), they usually make wine. If the costs of facilities, equipment, labor, risk, etc. are high enough, a grower might instead elect to sell grapes. Some producers both sell grapes and make wine.

In Champagne, there is room for market manipulation, apparently, and this is much under discussion lately. What happens, for example, if the financially deep "big houses" band together to squelch the supply of "grower" Champagne? How would they do that? By promising NOT to purchase grapes from growers who also make their own Champagne. Alice Feiring wrote about this recently and Eric Asimov mentioned it also in his recent blog post.

Stylistically the difference between big house and grower Champagne might not be detectable in a blind tasting - I wonder whether or not tasters would be able to identify wines as big house or grower in a blind tasting. Note to self - make this tasting happen this holiday season. I prefer to buy grower Champagne because I like the idea of buying wine made by a family who also grows the grapes, and also the idea of supporting smaller (or medium sized) businesses. I happily drink big house Champs too, but only when some kind soul is pouring it for me. When it's my dollar, I go for the growers.

Grower Champagne in my favorite wine shops tends to cost in the mid $30 to mid $40 range, a bit more for rose. Not cheap by any means, regardless of the value. So how to choose bottles to taste when a flop means over $30 out the window? I look for " A Terry Theise Selection" on the label. Theise has been a thorough and amorous student of Champagne (and other wine too - German Rieslings...) and his catalog (also recommended by Mssr. Asimov) is a great place to start.

Take a look at these quotes from the Theise catalog regarding two of Henri Billiot's Champagnes:

Henri Billiot Brut Réserve, N.V.
Many times I’ve felt, and said, this is the best N.V. Brut in all Champagne. That I’ve tasted! But I’m going to hedge just a little on the current cuvee, until I see what it does on the cork. I tasted a wine disgorged 2/07, made up of 50% 2003 and 25% each of ‘02-‘01. It was racy, loaded, complex and potentially amazing, but it was also disjointed and querulous from disgorgement-shock. The cuvee is always about 80% Pinot Noir but no one ever guesses, the wine is so animate, kinetic and hyper.

Henri Billiot Brut Rosé, N.V.
I forget how good this is because it’s always gone before I have a crack at it. They were pouring at at Alinea and I had a glass, and for a moment I almost forgot where I was (almost! It’s hard to forget when you’re sitting in the greatest restaurant in America…) the wine was so absurdly delicious. Again I tasted an 02/07 disgorgement but the Rosé withstood it superbly. The wine is always a year younger than the NV Brut, based only on demand; this one’s 50% ‘04 and 25% each ‘03-‘02, and the still red is 10-year old Ambonnay Pinot Noir. This may well be the best bottling yet; pure, direct roses and strawberries; chalky, vinous and charming; virtually perfect.

I don't know about you, but that really piqued my interest. So we recently tasted two Champagnes from Henri Billiot. We opened the Brut Réserve with a dessert of stewed rhubarb with fresh Vermont ricotta and a touch of wildflower honey - a terrific pairing. The astringent rhubarb with the rich and creamy ricotta went perfectly with the crystalline bubbly.

Henri Billiot Brut Réserve, N.V., $36 (Chambers Street Wines).
Nose of brioche and toast - lots of toast. Later on some berry and floral aromas. Honeysuckle, citrus, and a bit of yeast on the palate. All of this hangs on a strong frame of icy-stalactite acidity (yeah, that's a weird description, but work with me on this). Elegant and velvety mouth feel, but also structured and powerful. It is this contrast that makes the wine so fascinating to me. A definite re-buy.

We opened the rose to celebrate making it back to Brooklyn from out west in one piece, with a healthy and some what well rested baby. We enjoyed this wine with our brunch of Tello's Farm eggs, Flying Pig's Farm smoked ham, and Pain D'Avignon rye bread. Sorry - I am not one of those people who forces you to care about where my food comes from, but I do really like all of these products, so indulge me this once. Another great pairing, as the very dry rose bubbly worked perfectly with the smoky ham.

Henri Billiot Brut Rosé, N.V. $45 (Chambers Street Wines).
Lovely pale rusty pink color. Reserved nose at first but then glows with strawberry, flowers, toast, and caramel. Fresh palate with strawberry and some chalk, but the thing is the texture and the structure - light and elegant but somehow full and strong at the same time. Solid and ethereal. A great acid backbone. Another definite re-buy, but at $45 this falls into the special occasion category (sadly, as I could happily drink it every day).