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.

Overachievers and Underachievers

Last week I had the opportunity to drink some pretty fancy wine. BrooklynLady and I had some out of town (out of country, actually) friends over for dinner and we opened a few nice bottles. And my pal Bruce had a bunch of people over for dinner and selected Burgundy as his wine theme, and he was quite generous with the bottles he opened.

I don't often drink wine of this caliber and I think it can be tricky to evaluate. High expectations can color things. If I'm tasting blind, I can give you my thoughts and there's nothing tricky because I have no idea whether or not I'm supposed to like the wine. But if I open a bottle of 1978 Domaine Dujac Clos de la Roche with you over dinner, evaluating the wine would be tricky. I hardly ever drink wine of that caliber and I would so very much want to like it. And yet I would have such high expectations, the wine might have to be perfect in order to live up to them. This is purely hypothetical by the way, because I possess no such bottle of '78 Dujac. But you get my point.

Since I am only an occasional drinker of fancy wine, I think it's easiest to evaluate by simply classifying it as an overachiever or an underachiever, or as a wine that performs exactly as it should. The simplicity of this helps me avoid some of the over-thinking and the hype. Here are the fancy bottles I'm talking about from this week, and by fancy I don't necessarily mean expensive, by the way. For me, fancy wine can also be a bottle by an iconic producer whose wines I simply do not often have the opportunity to drink.

Overachievers:

1999 Domaine Leroy Meursault - Tough to get a handle on, but with time to re-taste and to think about the wine, it kind of blew me away. It's still a baby with a somewhat disjointed feel, and with almost too-intense acidity. But the fruit is so absolutely crystalline and pure, and the sense of mineral soil is so complete. The wine simply has incredible presence. This is Leroy and it's supposed to be among the very best wines of Burgundy. Is there a finer drinking villages Meursault right now? I don't know. But this one is fantastic, and it will get better. Would I feel the same way If I tasted it blind? I don't know. Not everyone at Bruce's house liked it. In fact, I liked it more than everyone else. I'd take a half case for the cellar and re-visit in 5 years. Provided that I find a thousand dollars on the street, that is.

1997 Champagne Salon Brut Blanc de Blancs - I drank this at the recent Wilson Daniels tasting. Before I drank it I asked my friend Tista who directs the estate's exports if it is surprising that Salon would make a 1997. "Not at all," he said. "Many top producers in the Côtes des Blancs made vintage wine in 1997." Shows you what I know. Anyway, this is supposed to be great wine - it is Salon. And it really was great - just amazing, with astounding complexity, layers of mineral and fruit, and a truly regal and graceful presence. I'm not sure what could happen to Blanc de Blancs so that it would be better than this. Tista poured me first the wine from the bottom of a bottle that had been open for a few hours, and then sent me off to sit with a glass from a fresh bottle. That was a good morning.

Wines that performed exactly as they should:

1981 López de Heredia Rioja Gran Reserva Viña Tondonia - this noble white wine was served blind, as I served all of the wines blind for our out-of-town friends. I was the only one who knew what it was. This was incredibly fresh, utterly defying its 28 years of age. There was a complex interplay of fruit and secondary flavors, a slightly saline and nutty note, and a persistent finish that seemed to offer a replay of each sip in its entirety. Great wine, and it's wine that is supposed to be great. Worth every penny.

2002 Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Clavoillon - Bruce opened this wine alongside the Leroy, and it was more open and ready to drink. It was clean cut and lovely with ripe fruit and bracing acidity, and a strong mineral sense. It is an elegant wine with delicious fruit and bitter herb flavors, and a stony finish that really persists. Which is exactly what I would expect from such an exalted producer.

NV Jose Dhondt Brut Blanc de Blancs - Served blind at our dinner. Tista actually nailed it as being from Oger, which is a little scary. Chalk infused citrus fruit with a lovely sheer texture, great acidity too. Delicious wine, exactly as it should be.

Underachievers:

1998 Chateau Simone Palette Blanc - Served blind at our dinner. From the iconic producer in Provence, this wine is a blend of about 47 different grapes. Okay, five grapes, maybe. Not a terribly expensive wine (although Simone has recently gone up in price), but not an easy find either. This was described by one guest as "a good wine, but not a great Simone," and that makes sense to me. I've only had one other Simone Blanc, and I was much more excited that time. This one was so fresh and youthful that it didn't really offer the nuance and complexity that one might want from a 10 year old white wine. It was perfectly good, but not exceptional, and it's supposed to be exceptional.

2002 Nicolas Potel Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Suchots - Let me tell you firstly that everyone else at Bruce's house really liked this wine. And it was, in fact, delicious wine - the nose was quite shy, but the fruit was ripe and dark with lovely floral notes and there was good acidity and balance. What's not to like? Nothing - I liked it too. But to me it is an underachiever in the sense that it just wasn't very complex, and there was little about it that spoke of Vosne-Romanée. That doesn't make it bad wine - as I said, a crowd of people really liked it. But when I spend that kind of dough on a bottle of red Burgundy I'm looking for more of a terroir stamp. I know, I'm a wine curmudgeon.

NV Champagne Lallement Cuvée Réserve Brut Grand Cru - Served blind at our dinner. Perhaps the top producer in Verzenay, Lallement makes tiny quantities of superb wine, based mostly on Pinot Noir. Cuvée Réserve is made from the estate's older vines, 80% Pinot Noir and the rest Chardonnay, and is a blend of at least two vintages. Which vintages in this case I cannot tell you, as there is no indication on the bottle (honestly - I am SO DONE with producers that will not provide me with proper information on the bottle). I've had great bottles of this wine, and poor bottles, and this was a poor bottle. As Peter Liem, Champagne guru succinctly put it when it was unveiled, "this bottle did not show well at all."

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...

Friday Night Bubbles

NV Jean Lallement et Fils Réserve Brut, $55, Terry Theise Selections, Skurnik Imports. The Lallement estate is located in the Grand Cru village of Verzenay in the northeastern part of the Montaigne de Reims. There are only 1,700 cases of Lallement wines produced. This is the smallest production of any of the Terry Theise estates, and it will continue to be even when production increases to 2,500 cases in 2010. I'm not sure how many of the 1,700 cases make it to the US, I'm guessing the majority do, but in any case, there is not a whole lot of this wine. If you see Lallement Champagne, it's probably a good idea to just buy it.

Lallement's NV Brut is the first bottle of grower Champagne that I ever drank at home, and I still have a soft spot for the wines. Both that wine and this one, the Réserve Brut, are a blend of 80% Pinot Noir and 20% Chardonnay. The wines are deeply fruited, rich, and intense. The difference between the two wines, as I understand it, is that the NV Brut blends wines from at least two vintages, while the Réserve Brut contains wines from a single year.

I've enjoyed every bottle of the NV Brut, but the Réserve Brut has been more variable, as you might expect - grapes are different each year and blending wines from different years minimizes this in the final wine. The Réserve Brut was incredibly rich with great depth and finesse the first time I had it, and based on that I splurged on a few more bottles. Although very good, it has not been as amazing as the first bottle. I think that my bottles are made from 2003 grapes. I'm guessing 2003 because the new version of this wine that I tasted the other day at the Terry Theise portfolio tasting is based on 2004, which I thought was stunning, by the way.

The bottle we drank at home last Friday night had an elegant and broad nose, very fresh and classy. Dark fruit, ladies' perfume, roast nuts, very mature and stately. The palate did not quite live up to the promise of the nose, though. There is a celery-like metallic tone to the palate, with bitter minerals and high pitched red currant flavors - pure and refreshing. Somehow a bit thin from the midpalate to the finish, although there is a chalky grace there.
We left the bottle alone for a while and almost 5 hours later it was the same lovely nose, but the flavors on the palate had clarified a bit. Now it was the purest of red fruit completely surrounded by a pillow of chalk, and it was lovely. Still not as fleshy in the middle as the newer wine, but really very good. And I suspect this will get better with bottle age, so my last bottle goes into the tank for the next five years.

I hope that Terry Theise convinces the Lallements to include more information on the back labels of their wines. When I spend this kind of dough on a bottle of Champagne I would like to know whether it is 2004 grapes or 2003 grapes, for example, and when it was disgorged. These are the things that we as consumers need to know about this wine in order to understand what we're buying. Not that it's necessary to know this in order to enjoy drinking the wine, but if, like me, there are only so many $50 and up Champagne bottles you buy in a year, I'd rather not roll the dice - I want to know what I'm buying.

Friday Night Bubbles

It's easy to think that a non-vintage Champagne is going to taste just as you remember it. Especially if you spent your formative wine years drinking big-house wines like Perrier-Jouët and Veuve Cliquot. Those wines are built to taste the same year after year. Not the case with grower Champagne. As vintage quality and perhaps wine making practices vary, so does the wine.

I tasted Jean Lallement's Champagne for the first time in January of 2007 and I loved it. So I grabbed two bottles, one of which BrooklynLady and I greatly enjoyed at home sometime that February. I got another bottle a few months later when I saw it at a good price, but this last bottle was part of a more recent shipment - same label, but a new combination of grapes. Lallement sadly does not include the disgorgement date on the back label, and I didn't bother marking which wine was which. So when I opened one of them in May, and when we were disappointed with the wine, I figured it was the bottle from the new shipment.

Hard to know for sure, as it could have been bottle variation among the older wines that speaks for the lesser second bottle, and bottle age on the new shipment that accounts for the great wine on Friday. Why don't they just include the disgorgement dates, for crying out loud? Especially on these grower bottles - they're not going to be so old and stale in these small quantities. Anyway, we opened our last bottle on Friday night and we were really excited about the wine. Definitely the best of the three bottles, and so good that I have to take another shot at the current shipment and see what's what.

NV Jean Lallement Brut Grand Cru, $36 (new price is about $42) Terry Theise/Skurnik Imports. This Champagne is about 80% Pinot Noir, and 20% Chardonnay. The nose is so clean and fresh, with apple skins, sweet ginger cake, flowers, and chalky minerals. And it got better and better, really beautiful after an hour. The texture is silky smooth, very fine, with focused red fruits pushing all the way through to the finish, which is very persistent and leaves nuanced mouth aromas of orange peel, ginger, herbs, and bread. Great acidity and very pleasant underlying minerality. Just beautiful wine. I wish I knew whether or not I should buy this again, or wait for the next release. But I guess that's part of the fun with grower Champagne - things don't stay the same.