Our annual Champagne tasting was last Saturday. This has been an annual event since the Primitivo days - we'd do an intimate dinner for 18 guests with 20 or so different wines. This year, we elect to do the tasting at La Belle Vie, a nice bistro on the West Side of COS. However, the GM there cannot stop taking rezzies and we end up with 48 reservations. Holy Snot! Some of these wines we only get a case or 6 bottles - so we redo the original pouring plan to make smaller pours of a greater number of wines.
OK. Let's talk about Champagne for a second.
Why is it, when thinking of great wines, we always seem to gravitate towards the ones that are made in minute quantities on the smallest of estates, by dedicated and obsessive grower-producer-winemakers (who tend to know every plant in their vineyards and nook and cranny of their cellars), that exhibit varietal correctness, a keen sense of terroir and vintage, and the unmistakable and unique frisson that is the hallmark of great wines? Because that’s what makes a great wine. Now, here’s the follow-up question: Why is it, when we think of great champagnes, that the first names that come to mind are often those of industrial products made in the millions of cases, by large multi-national conglomerates, robbed of any sense of terroir or varietal characteristic?
Champagne is a wine like any other – the best examples are made from grapes grown in the best vineyards, by small-production, hands-on winemaker-growers, whose connection to their craft is not broken by marketing-driven needs for a “consistent product” that’s chemically stable. Isn't Champagne, at its base, wine as well? From whence the disconnect? To answer my own question: well, I’d venture that the marketing weenies have been rather successful.
Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of Champagne!
The “Grandes Marques” (the big houses, you know who they are) will tell you that the blender’s art is paramount in Champagne, that the wines themselves need the hand of the winemaker to be drinkable, that the best expression of the lovely soils and almost 1,000 villages of the Champagne region is a “house style” that’s completely consistent from year to year. Frankly, I think that’s criminal. AND a humongous pile of 100% pure bullshit. As my good friend R in LA says, “Champagne is a part of Burgundy and the best wines come from the best producers growing in the premier and grand cru villages, and you can taste the difference between wines from Cuis and Dizy just like you can taste the difference between Chambolle-Musigny and Nuits!” Right on, bro.
The top 15 producers sold in the US have over 85% of the market. The top 3 have just about 65% of the market. Do you like monopolies? Not I! Let’s support Farmer-Fizz, if for no other reason that to shame the big industrial producers into recognizing that Champagne need not be a homogenized, predictable, boring, uninspiring and unexciting product.
Enough Ranting. Some background: champagne is produced from a base still wine that is made from Pinot family grapes - Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay are the most widely planted, though Pinot Gris and Blanc sometimes show up, as well as ancient varieties like Fromenteau and Petit Meslier and Arbanne and a host of other wallflowers. Growers using these unknown varietals are going for a particular expression that is impossible in the industrially made champagnes - these are unique personalities; definitely not for everyone. Think of the first time you tried a Viognier after only drinking something like California Chardonnay - for me, that experience was wild, as the un-innocuousness of the flavors, their heft and weight on the tongue, their, well ... fecundity ... blew my mind.
Many of you know that yr. corresp. is not a huge fan of Chardonnay - it is, after all, a vine that grows well all over the world with minimal care (more like a weed, actually), and is made into stupefyingly boring wines all over the planet. In Champagne, as in other places, sadly, this is also often the case. But - there are producers who make great wines from Chardonnay, and a good number of them are in Champagne (Chablis is my other reference point). As R says: "Remember: Chardonnay’s not finished until it has bubbles!" Yup, I like that.
What follows are some of the standouts of this tasting. All the wines come from the Terry Theise portfolio of Champagnes - I think he is and has been making the most consistently excellent selection of wines from Champagne. A fun thing to do is to open one or two of these with an example of an industrially-made champagne - the differences are very, very edifying. Also, the quality that you get in the bottle from farmer-fizz is exceptional, and provides far better value than the basic bottlings from industrial producers. The Grandes Marques are forced to buy up every grape they can get their hands on to satisfy the ever-increasing demand that is a result of their very successful marketing. However, most of their profits go back to corporate ownership, dividends and obnoxious diamond pinky rings on guys named "Louie" instead of back in the bottle, where they belong!
Marc Hebrart, Brut "Cuvée de Réserve"
80/20 Pinot Noir/Chardonnay. I loved the airiness of this bottling - it is mineral and has gorgeous white fruit - but it was the quality of "dancing" that I found so utterly seductive. It was among the big suprises of the evening, as this is a new wine for me - I'd only had a taste once before. Lovely mousse, good acidity, lingering soft but bright finish. (4.0-nb)
Aubry Sablé Blanc de Blancs
Sex in a bottle. The "Sablé" series has less carbonation - the mousse is more subtle as a textural element rather than being an agressive aspect of what carries the aromas and flavors. This is all white fruits, nuts and melons; a touch herbaceous, yet sweet to my palate, with lovely integration.
Terry' notes on this wine read: "40% Chardonnay, 30% Petit Meslier and 30% Arbanne; disgorged 2/07, and very dry (2 g.l.); at this moment it’s a bit cranky from disgorgement, but the ripe nose is dominated by Arbanne; the wine is all dill and buttered green beans; like eating a kumamoto and then sucking on the shell; it’s not unbalanced, just balanced on an unyielding frequency, and in fact the wine is both refined and compelling. “Sablé,” by the way, is Aubry’s term for a lower-than-normal pressure." I love the thought of sucking on the oyster's shell after swallowing it. Beautiful wine. (4.5nb)
Billiot Cuvée Julie (Tête de Cuvée)
Wow, wow, wow. This is a decidely modern wine - the oak comes through as vanilla coconut cookie-like aromas, and it is a knockout. Though I'm not a fan of oaked wines, this is amazing - the oak is in perfect harmony with the fruit and minerality. The fruit is guava, tangerine, white peaches - all wow, all the time. (4.5-nb)
Billiot Rosé
I've simply loved this wine for ages - it's made as a white wine, to which 10-yr old still pinot noir wine is added to darken it. The aromas and flavors of the Pinot really shine through - The aromas and falvors of dark cherries is piercing and direct. Also, roses, tea leaves, strawberries and an exotic earthiness. Brilliant. (4.5-nb)
René Geoffroy, Brut "Rosé de Saignée"
As Terry Theise says about this wine: "Ah, Geoffroy Rosé; the agony, the ecstacy, the unavailability." Also: "... even with no dosage this is jail-bait rosé ..." I couldn't have said it better. On the nose, the Pinot fruit really comes out - it smells like Burgundy! Strawberries, cherries, red cassis galore. Bright, racy and forward on the palate. Lovely. (3.5+nb)
Pierre Peters, Brut Blanc de Blancs, Grand Cru "Cuvée de Réserve"
I love the steeliness and clarity of this bottling. I had a taste of this about 5 months ago when the first samples came to the US, and was strangely disappointed - it seemed disjointed and awkward. The ensuing time has made a big difference in the wine - this showed the typical mineral and fruit aspects of Peters' wine - and it had put on both a bit of weight and grace. Loads of pear, nectarine, orange blossom, and minerals galore - this could stand 3-6 years of aging and probably drink well for almost a decade thereafter. Needs time. (3.5+nb) Previous bottlings of this have been among the greatest bottles of wine made from 100% Chardonnay I've ever tasted - perhaps this one will rival them.
Many of these wines are available on my company's webstore: Vintagespec.com.
I'll finish off with Terry's exhortations as to why one should drink "Grower Champagne." Here's a link to his 2007 catalog, which goes into great detail about the wines.
"You should drink grower Champagne if you've forgotten that Champagne is WINE.
"You should drink "farmer-fizz" if you'd rather buy Champagne from a farmer than a factory.
"You should drink it if you'd rather have a wine expressive of vineyard, and the grower's own connection to vineyard, than a wine "formed" by a marketing swami who's studied to the Nth-degree what you can be per-
suaded to "consume." Do you really want to be reduced to a mere "consumer" when you can drink Champagne like a whole human being?
"You should drink grower-Champagne if the individually distinctive flavors of terroir-driven wines matter more than the lowest-common-denominator pap served up by the mega conglomerates in the "luxury-
goods" business.
"You should drink it because it's honest REAL wine grown and made by a vintner—by a FAMILY just like yours—by a "him," not by an "it." You should drink it because it's better to buy wine from a person than from a company.
"You should drink it because its price is honestly based on what it costs to produce, not manipulated to account for massive PR and ad budgets, or to hold on to market-share.
"You should drink grower-Champagne because, like all hand-crafted estate-bottled wines, it is not a mere Thing but is indeed a BEING, expressive of where it grew and who raised it. In drinking it you help protect
DIVERSITY, and diversity leads to VITALITY. And if you'd rather eat a local field-ripened summer tomato rapturous with sweetness instead of some January tomato you buy at the supermarket hard as a stone and tasting of nothing, then you should be drinking farmer-fizz!"
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