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Champagne

There is something special about Champagne, and this something—which is unique to Champagne, not just to sparkling wines in general—has, I suspect, always been there, ever since Champagne as we know it today first began to be produced in the later half of the seventeenth century. Champagne is the celebration wine. It launches ships; it commemorates anniversaries; it toasts weddings. As Talleyrand, foreign minister of France in 1814, said, it is a civilising wine; an elevating wine, as Jorrocks neatly put it ('champagne certainly gives one very gentlemanly ideas'). It can even change principles: 'I'm only a beer teetotaller, not a Champagne teetotaller' (Candida). And it can lead to flights of fancy which no other wine can match. John Arlott in his book on Krug quotes a schoolgirl's first experience of Champagne: 'It's like icicles of rainbow in my mouth.' What a marvellous expression! I wish I'd thought of it!

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Champagne Vintages

1998 Champagne escaped the frost and hail which had reduced the crop in Chablis and further south. After a good August but a rainy september there was a record crop. Quality, reflecting this volume, is merely fair.
1997 A small harvest. After a poor summer fine September weather produced wines both high in alcohol and acidity. Very good quality at best: but variable.
1996 A good-sized harvest. Excellent weather during the run up to the vintage produced very healthy ripe fruit. Never before have there been musts with such high sugar readings and such high acidities. Fine quality. Almost certainly to be declared as vintage.
1995 A large harvest. After a shaky start—frost in April and again in May—the flowering was successful and the summer warm and dry. After a rainy start to Septembera the harvesting weather was benign. Very good quality. Probably to be declared as a vintage.
1994 A small harvest. The summer was largely fine, but the weather deteriorated in September and then improved at the end of the picking period. Nevertheless rot was widespread and a sever sorting out of the fruit was vital. Average quality only.
1993 An average harvest. The summer was uneven, odium and mildew prevalent, and heavy rain set in just as the ahrvest was about to commence, causing widespread rot, and lowering the scidity of the wines. Not great, but a stop-gap vintage for some houses.
1992 A large harvest. An early harvest after a generous good summer was a little interrupted by rain but nevertheless a satisfactory if notoutstanding crop, best in the Chardonnays of the Côte de Blancs. Declared by some houses as vintage.
1991 A large harvest, despite frost in late April. After a good summer the harvest, which began late, was spoilt by rain. Quality is only fair.
1990 A large harvest. After a poor spring, including frost in early April, the summer weather was excellent. The harvest was early, the fruit ripe, the level of potential alcohol high, as were the acidities. A splendid vintage of very high quality: firm, beautifully balanced, elegant wines which will keep for a long time.

EARLIER VINTAGES OF NOTE
1989, 1988, 1986, 1985, 1983, 1982, 1979, 1976, 1975, 1971, 1971, 1970, 1969, 1966, and 1964.

Leading Champagne Houses

Billecart-Salmon
Bollinger
Alfred Gratien
Heidieck & Co. Monopole
Charles Heidsieck
Piper-Heidsick
Krug
Lanson
Laurent-Piper
Marne & Champagne
Moët & Chandon
Mumm
Perrier-Jouët
Pol Roger
Pommery & Greno
Louis Roederer
Ruinart
Salon
Taittinger
Veuve Vlicquot-Ponsardin

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Piper Heidsieck

Commune: Reims.
Owner: LVHM.
Annual Sales: 5 million bottles.
Florens-Ludwig Heidsieck, a German wool merchant, set up Heidsieck and Company in the years just before the French Revolution, and the firm passed to three nephews in the 1830's, each of whom went their separate ways. Piper is now the largest of the three. Its de luxe wine is called Florens-Louis. Heidsieck and Co. Monopole was taken over by Mumm in 1972 and now belongs to Paul-François Vranken. The prestige marque is called Diamant Bleu and the top wine Champagne Charlie.

Charles Heidsieck is my favorite of the three—though none would be in my superstar league—and the wines are fresh, generous, fruity and medium-bodied. Heidsieck and Co. Monopole makes standard, dependable wines. I find the wines of Piper-Heidsieck a bit green and find that they age less gracefully than the others.

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(Rated: 3 stars) Krug

Commune: Reims.
Owner: LVHM.
Annual Sales: 500,000 bottles.
vineyard ownership: 15.5 ha.
Quality is the keynote in this small but prestigious house. Fermentation is in oak, no malolactic fermentation is allowed to occur, and no wines are put on the market until they have had considerable bottle age. Only vintage and de luxe Champagnes are produced. The deluxe marque, which used to be called Private Cuveé but was redesigned and relaunched as Grande Cuvée in the late 1990's, is an elegant, refined, complex wine which makes an excellent aperitif. I prefer the more masculine, fuller and firmer richness and depth of the vintage wine, always held back six to eight years before being sold. Recent additions to the range are a rosé and an elegant, harmonious single-vineyard Blanc de Blancs, Clos du Mesnil. Krug is not a cheap Champagne—which is why I refer to their non-vintage as a de luxe marque. Personally, good as it is, I can think of a number of vintage Champagnes I would rather spend my money on. The vintage wine, despite its even higher price, is worth it, and it lasts and lasts.

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(Rated: 1 star) Moët & Chandon

Commune: Epernay.
Owner: LVHM.
Annual Sales: 24 million bottles.
vineyard ownership: 291 ha.
Moët, even without its subsidiary companies Mercier and Ruinart—not to menion its association with the Louis Vuitton group which owns Veuve Clicquot and others—is by far the largest Champagne house. Moët's vineyards produce about 20 per cent of its needs. Pierre-Gabriel Chandon, son-in-law of Jean Rémy Moët, himself the grandson of the founder of the firm, bought the Abbey of Hautvillers in 1823—the monks had previously supplied his father-in-law with wine. Jean-Rémy was a personal friend of Napoleon who decorated him with the Légion d'Honneur. At the suggestion of Lawrence Fenn, an English journalist, the firm launched Dom Pérignon in 1935 to celebrate the centenary of it agency in Britain. This wine, from a blend of roughly half Pinot Noir and half Chardonnay and only from their own 100 per cent rated vineyards, is one of the best, as well as the best known, of the de luxe brands. It was also the first.

Despite the quantity produced, the standard and consistency of the non-vintage Moët is high: a medium-bodied, fruity wine, not absolutely bone dry, which I would put at the top of my second division. It is estimated that the quantity of Dom Pérignon sold equals more than the combined total of all the other de luxe brands put together. Despite this it really is a top-notch wine, worth every penny of its sadly inflated price.

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(Rated: 1 star) Taittinger

Commune: Reims.
Owner: taittinger family.
Annual Sales: 4.2 million bottles.
vineyard ownership: 250ß ha.
Pierre Taittinger took over the business of Fourneaux Forest in 1932 and the group, now run by his son Claude, has since bought the Champagne house of Irroy and the Loire business of Monmousseau and Bouvet-Ladubay. Taittinger is one of the houses which is better known for its prestige wine—in this case, the excellent Blanc de Blancs, Comtes de Champagne—than for its non-vintage. Brut Absolu is a wine with a nil dosage.

All Taittinger wines, like those of Ruinart, contain a large proportion of Chardonnay in the blend. I find the non-vintage elegant, fruity and reliable. The Comtes de Champagne is very full and rich, not obviously a Blanc de Blancs: a very fine example which lasts well.

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(Rated: 2 stars) Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin

Commune: Reims.
Owner: LVHM.
Annual Sales: 1 million bottles.
vineyard ownership: 280 ha.
The famous widow Clicquot was left on her own with a young daughter in 1805 at the age of twenty-seven. Thanks to the ingenuity of her salesman, Monsieur Bohn, 20,000 bottles reached Saint-Petersburg during the autumn of 1814 (having set off in defiance of a Russian embargo on French imports), where they sold for 12 roubles a piece, and Clicquot soon dominated the Russian market, though at the time it hardly sold at all within France. Madame Clicquot is also credited with the discovery of pupitres in order to facilitate remuage. All the Champagnes are impeccably made, from the non-vintage to the prestige lable, La Grande Dame. The house style is for full, rich and firm wines but not as austere as, say, Bollinger. The non-vintage is consistent and one of the very best. A subsidiary is Canard-Duchêne.

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