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!
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