The World’s Most Famous Bubbly
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While winemakers from California to South Africa produce champagne-type wines that can be excellent, in all the world the only wine that can legally be labeled champagne comes from a growing region east and southeast of Paris, the ancient Champagne region that now comprises the French departements of the Marne and the Aube.
Of the many misconceptions people have about champagne, one is that Dom Perignon invented it. Wine had been made in the Champagne region for centuries before the time of Dom Perignon, cellarmaster at the Abbey of Hautevilliers near Reims in the 17th century. Up until about a hundred years or so before Dom Perignon’s time, though, champagne wine was a still, light red made from pinot noir grapes. As Gourmet magazine’s wine editor Gerald Asher points out in his great book On Wine, it was Nicolas de Brulart, chancellor to the king of France in the 16th century, who first encouraged the development of a light-colored, bubbly wine, the forerunner of champagne as we know it.
De Brulart owned vast vineyards in Champagne near the town of Ay, and got an almost exclusive deal to supply the court of Henri IV with wine. In deference to the tastes of the time, he insisted that his winemakers produce wines that were as delicate and novel as possible. They separated the grape skins from the grape juice as soon as they could in order to get a pale wine rather than a red one, and eventually bottled the wine before shipment — not the usual practice at the time — so that the natural fizziness of this northern wine could be preserved rather than lost through evaporation from the barrel. The success of this bubbly concoction was so great that in 1756 Voltaire referred to champagne as “the brilliant image of France,” and that epithet is probably still accurate today.
What Dom Perignon did do was perfect the concept of cuvee, or blend, which is still used by all champagne makers today. Dom Perignon was said to have been such a great taster than he could tell by eating one grape straight off the vine exactly where it came from and with which other grapes it should be blended to produce a perfect cuvee. Today, champagne-makers blend in an easier way, after the grape juice has fermented in the vat or barrel. The use of blending is one of the things that separates champagne from other wines. A champagne-maker blends not only wines from different vineyards but usually even wines from different vintages, in order to achieve the best possible final product that most clearly reflects the style of a particular champagne house. Even vintage champagnes, in which all the grapes used to make the wine were harvested in a single (usually great) year that is marked on the label, involve blends of grapes from many vineyards. The other distinctive feature of champagne is its production process, whereby sediment in the bottle is gradually shifted to the neck of the bottle using a system called remuage (“riddling”, in English) which was invented by the Veuve Clicquot, the widow Clicquot, head of a champagne house in the 19th century. In her system, bottles of wine were placed neck-down at an angle in a table with holes in it, and turned by hand every day until the sediment settled above the cork.
Today, remuage is usually done by machine, but the principle is still the same. In the old days, the sediment was removed by simply pulling the cork, letting the bubbles in the wine push out the sediment, and then recorking the bottle. Since this involved lots of wasted wine and loss of bubbles, another system was developed whereby the neck of the bottle is flash-frozen and then uncorked to allow a frozen lump of sediment to be removed without much waste. The bottle is then topped up with more champagne, sugar and yeast to provoke a second fermentation in the bottle, the source of champagne’s bubbles.
The amount of sugar added determines how sweet the wine will eventually be, from very dry brut champagne to the sweeter demi-sec varieties usually served with dessert. For generations champagnes were made on the sweet side, which is why in France many people still believe that champagne should best be served with dessert. But for the past few decades, the trend has been for light, delicate champagnes, particularly blanc-de-blancs (made exclusively from white grapes, i.e. chardonnay) that are suited mainly to be drunk as aperitifs.
While all true champagne is made in the same way, champagnes do not all taste alike by any means. Why the difference? Champagnes vary according to the types of grapes used in making them, and the percentage of each type that makes up the final cuvee. Some champagnes are made mainly or solely from chardonnay grapes, for example, while others are blends of juices from chardonnay, pinot noir (the great red grape of Burgundy) or pinot meunier. The vineyards in which the grapes were grown also affect the taste of the final product, just as for every other kind of wine. What many do not know is that there are 17 grand cru villages in champagne, and the grapes grown on these privileged sites (or in the slightly less prestigious premier cru sites) definitely have superior flavor.
Many champagne-makers blend their grand cru grapes with other grapes, while some bottle grand cru grapes separately for their special (higher-priced) cuvees. Aging in used oak barrels or casks is no longer common in champagne, but two of the top Champagne houses – Krug and, to a lesser extent, Bollinger – still use this practice, one reason the champagnes from these two houses are among the richest-tasting on the market. Another factor affecting the taste of champagne is the length of time the wine spends on its lees (with its sediment). While sediment sounds like something to be avoided, in fact the…
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While winemakers from California to South Africa produce champagne-type wines that can be excellent, in all the world the only wine that can legally be labeled champagne comes from a growing region east and southeast of Paris, the ancient Champagne region that now comprises the French departements of the Marne and the Aube.
Of the many misconceptions people have about champagne, one is that Dom Perignon invented it. Wine had been made in the Champagne region for centuries before the time of Dom Perignon, cellarmaster at the Abbey of Hautevilliers near Reims in the 17th century. Up until about a hundred years or so before Dom Perignon’s time, though, champagne wine was a still, light red made from pinot noir grapes. As Gourmet magazine’s wine editor Gerald Asher points out in his great book On Wine, it was Nicolas de Brulart, chancellor to the king of France in the 16th century, who first encouraged the development of a light-colored, bubbly wine, the forerunner of champagne as we know it.
De Brulart owned vast vineyards in Champagne near the town of Ay, and got an almost exclusive deal to supply the court of Henri IV with wine. In deference to the tastes of the time, he insisted that his winemakers produce wines that were as delicate and novel as possible. They separated the grape skins from the grape juice as soon as they could in order to get a pale wine rather than a red one, and eventually bottled the wine before shipment — not the usual practice at the time — so that the natural fizziness of this northern wine could be preserved rather than lost through evaporation from the barrel. The success of this bubbly concoction was so great that in 1756 Voltaire referred to champagne as “the brilliant image of France,” and that epithet is probably still accurate today.
What Dom Perignon did do was perfect the concept of cuvee, or blend, which is still used by all champagne makers today. Dom Perignon was said to have been such a great taster than he could tell by eating one grape straight off the vine exactly where it came from and with which other grapes it should be blended to produce a perfect cuvee. Today, champagne-makers blend in an easier way, after the grape juice has fermented in the vat or barrel. The use of blending is one of the things that separates champagne from other wines. A champagne-maker blends not only wines from different vineyards but usually even wines from different vintages, in order to achieve the best possible final product that most clearly reflects the style of a particular champagne house. Even vintage champagnes, in which all the grapes used to make the wine were harvested in a single (usually great) year that is marked on the label, involve blends of grapes from many vineyards. The other distinctive feature of champagne is its production process, whereby sediment in the bottle is gradually shifted to the neck of the bottle using a system called remuage (“riddling”, in English) which was invented by the Veuve Clicquot, the widow Clicquot, head of a champagne house in the 19th century. In her system, bottles of wine were placed neck-down at an angle in a table with holes in it, and turned by hand every day until the sediment settled above the cork.
Today, remuage is usually done by machine, but the principle is still the same. In the old days, the sediment was removed by simply pulling the cork, letting the bubbles in the wine push out the sediment, and then recorking the bottle. Since this involved lots of wasted wine and loss of bubbles, another system was developed whereby the neck of the bottle is flash-frozen and then uncorked to allow a frozen lump of sediment to be removed without much waste. The bottle is then topped up with more champagne, sugar and yeast to provoke a second fermentation in the bottle, the source of champagne’s bubbles.
The amount of sugar added determines how sweet the wine will eventually be, from very dry brut champagne to the sweeter demi-sec varieties usually served with dessert. For generations champagnes were made on the sweet side, which is why in France many people still believe that champagne should best be served with dessert. But for the past few decades, the trend has been for light, delicate champagnes, particularly blanc-de-blancs (made exclusively from white grapes, i.e. chardonnay) that are suited mainly to be drunk as aperitifs.
While all true champagne is made in the same way, champagnes do not all taste alike by any means. Why the difference? Champagnes vary according to the types of grapes used in making them, and the percentage of each type that makes up the final cuvee. Some champagnes are made mainly or solely from chardonnay grapes, for example, while others are blends of juices from chardonnay, pinot noir (the great red grape of Burgundy) or pinot meunier. The vineyards in which the grapes were grown also affect the taste of the final product, just as for every other kind of wine. What many do not know is that there are 17 grand cru villages in champagne, and the grapes grown on these privileged sites (or in the slightly less prestigious premier cru sites) definitely have superior flavor.
Many champagne-makers blend their grand cru grapes with other grapes, while some bottle grand cru grapes separately for their special (higher-priced) cuvees. Aging in used oak barrels or casks is no longer common in champagne, but two of the top Champagne houses – Krug and, to a lesser extent, Bollinger – still use this practice, one reason the champagnes from these two houses are among the richest-tasting on the market. Another factor affecting the taste of champagne is the length of time the wine spends on its lees (with its sediment). While sediment sounds like something to be avoided, in fact the lees of wine give it depth and flavor. Some champagne makers keep their better wines on the lees for longer than usual, popping the sediment out just before putting the champagne on the market. Such bottles are marked “R.D.” for recemment degorgee (recently “disgorged,” i.e. its sediment has only recently been removed). Bollinger’s luscious “RD” vintage champagnes, fermented in wood and using a high proportion of pinot noir grapes, are among the most prized champagnes among connoisseurs.
Another rarity of Bollinger’s is a champagne made from grapes from a parcel of vines that were not grafted onto American rootstock as a protection against phylloxera. Bollinger bottles this extremely rare champagne with the mention “vieilles vignes francaises” (old French vines) on the label, and if anyone out there has ever tasted it, be sure to let us hear on the message boards what it was like! Champagnes must by law spend one year aging in the bottle in the champagne-maker’s cellars before being put on the market. Most of the top champagne producers let their champagnes age much longer than that, particularly the vintage champagnes. Non-vintage champagnes are usually made to be drunk during the year they are put on the market, but, according to Gerald Asher, most vintage champagnes are probably at their best within around 10 years of the vintage.
Whether your favorite champagne is a sublimely delicate Taittinger or a lushly rich Bollinger RD, or something much less rarefied, it can’t help but be the life of any party.
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