Today only a few firms, notably Alfred Gratien and Krug, as well as Jacques Selosse and Tarlant among the growers, ferment all their wines in wood, while Bollinger uses wood for some of its finest offerings. And even the traditionalists are not sentimental. They need wood to preserve their firms’ styles, but in most cases the wines are whisked off into small stainless steel vats as soon as they have fermented. Inevitably the style of the wines is more robust. But the equation is a complicated one. The wines Bollinger uses in its premium RD have been fermented in wood because this oxydizes the wine to enable it to cope better with the longer time on lees while maturing. Other firms like Roederer and Jacquesson, while fermenting in stainless steel, allow their newly fermented wines to pass a few months in casks or, more often in much larger foudres holding thousands of litres of wine before they are bottled in order to provide them with additional structure rather than definite woodiness. Even a short period of maturation in wood provides additional richness, allowing the house concerned to block malolactic fermentation.
‘LE MALO’ – OUI OU NON?
The switch from wood to stainless steel also affected the malolactic fermentation, when the harsh malic acid in the newly fermented wine is transformed into the gentler lactic acid. This creates a fundamental problem for the Champenois. The very existence of le malo, as it is universally called, was only discovered (by Professor Emile Peynaud of Bordeaux) after the war, and the Champenois found it didn’t happen when the wine was fermented in oak casks. This involved the possible danger that it might occur during the second fermentation and spoil the wine. They also found that wines which had undergone their malo before they were bottled were less harsh when young than those which underwent the transition in bottle. Lanson, which didn’t believe in the malo, found that its wines were attacked as harsh and acid if they were sold too young. So they simply matured them for longer.54
By contrast, Moët developed its own strain of bacteria to complete the malo before the wines are bottled. Other enormous wine factories, like the CVC and the UVC, follow the same path. The newly fermented wine is immediately given its malo, then reduced to -4°C to get rid of the tartrates, which might otherwise form unsightly, if harmless, crystals in the bottle. If, on the other hand, you want to inhibit malo to achieve what you believe is a fresher wine, you may have to use a little sulphur dioxide.
Everything comes down to the style of the house. ‘We have a malo,’ Alain de Polignac told me when he was in charge at Pommery, ‘to remove the acidity.’ For his part Henri Krug clearly felt that the earlier ignorance of the malo did not matter a great deal. ‘The whole question of malo is a false one,’ he claims, ‘since the wines always undergo malo: the crucial point is that they should not undergo it at the same time as the second fermentation. In that sense Moët is right, but we find we don’t have any problems. The fact is that no one knows whether wines mature earlier or better if le malo is carried out before the second fermentation.’ Nevertheless, it is now clear that if the producer does not carry out the malo the wine does appear green for a long time though it may well emerge as fresher, almost cleaner, after a longer period undergoing its second fermentation. But the balance is a delicate one. The highly quality-conscious house of Gosset found that a lack of malo ensured that the wine was fresher. ‘We try to keep the fruit,’ they say but introduced malo to make their wine softer and easier to drink as an aperitif, which has been its major role since 1945.
THE TAILLES
The next decision for the winemaker is whether to use any of the tailles, the second pressings of the juice. In theory, or so they say, the most quality-conscious producers use only the cuvée, the first pressing. Nevertheless, some of the most ‘serious’ houses cheerfully admit that they use some of the premieres tailles, especially of Chardonnay, in their blend, because it is richer and less acid than the cuvée.
The better firms naturally develop a rather aristocratic attitude. They genuinely do know better and they see no reason to pander to vulgar prejudices against the Meunier or the tailles. Krug ‘was created to be different,’ said the brothers Henri and Remi. The founder was arrogant and the family has always followed the same line. Like it or lump it. By contrast Alain de Polignac, who did a great deal to improve the qualities of the wines at Pommery, said simply that ‘we are making a wine which is easy to drink, we are not trying to impose our style on people.’
THE RESERVE WINES
The next decision to be made before the team headed by the chef des caves start to blend the wines to undergo the second fermentation is the proportion, and age, of the older wines to be held in reserve. This has increased since the early 1990s with the introduction of the wines ‘blocked’ by the CIVC in order to maintain a steady flow of wine whatever the, often varying, quantity fermented each year. During the twenty-first century yields varied between 11,000 kilos per hectare and a massive 15,500 kilos in 2008. In 1998 the reserve was augmented by a ‘continuous reserve’. As a result, there is now reckoned to be enough wine for 100 million bottles, enough for a third of a year’s sales, of reserve wines in stock while producers are using cleaner barrels and better containers, separating the wines by cru and age, often in temperature controlled vats including stainless steel tanks at a stable 12°C.
The general quality of champagne has been greatly improved by the increased use of older reserve wines; today 25 per cent is quite a normal proportion. Using reserve wines can help in many ways. They can improve the quality of poor harvests and boost the quantity when yields are down; and they can add freshness if the acidity is too low as well as maturity and depth if the harvest is light and lacks concentration. But handling these wines is complicated. As Giles Fallowfield put it:55
They have to decide which wines to keep in their reserve, how to keep them both in terms of the storage vessel and the form in which they are kept (by parcel, single cru, simple or complete blend of one or more varieties), how long to keep these wines (preserving the freshness is the issue) and when and what to use them for and in what blends.
The use of reserve wines is not, of course, a new phenomenon but was generally confined to producers like Krug of wines which were generally matured for five years or more, but the practice was highlighted in 1985 when Rémy Martin bought Charles Heidsieck and Piper-Heidsieck. Rémy’s chairman, André Heriard-Dubreuil promptly allowed Daniel Thibault, the chef des caves, to slow sales to allow the wines to mature so that he had eight vintages of reserve wines to put into the new version, Brut Reserve Mise en Caves. This enabled Thibault to provide a date of cellaring a wine which had an unprecedented 40 per cent of reserve wines, as well as providing fuller information about the age of its basic wine than any other firm. Thibault died young in 2002 but his successor Régis Camus has continued the practice – Thibault’s qualities were recognized after his death when the trophy in the International Wine Challenge’s sparkling wine category was named after him.
Today the combined effect of Thibault’s influence and, far more importantly the ever-growing stocks of older wines has led to a considerable increase in the proportion of older reserve wines, to an average of 20 per cent or more in many major brands, with over 30 per cent in Mumm. Of course, most firms don’t want to use wines which are too old. As Didier Mariotti of Mumm puts it, ‘I prefer to use previous years’ Cordon Rouge blends, however we also keep grand cru reserve wines for up to fifteen years, I use them if necessary for both the Cordon Rouge and the Brut Selection blends.’ Today the openness of the producers is exemplified by Charles Philipponnat who not only provides the exact proportion of reserve wine in the blend, along with information about the dates of the harvest and of degorgement but also the level of dosage, an historically unthinkable degree of transparency about many of the factors affecting the characteristics – and the quality – of the wine. The increased use of reserve wines helps not only to provide better structure and roundness of the wine but also acts to reduce even further the use of sugar which had already been reduced by the e
ffects of climate change to result in a softer, riper, rounder more approachable and less aggressive fizz.
Obviously, the more old wine a firm has in reserve, the older the wine it sells, the better able it is to absorb small or unsatisfactory vintages and ensure continuity of style. Bollinger, which used to have eight years’ stock, still has five years’ – a prospect to appal any accountant conscious of the financial costs. But the stock is an invaluable insurance premium. As Henri Krug pointed out: ‘The longer you keep your stock, the less affected you are by a single bad year because you are short by a lower fraction of your total stock. If you hold three years’ stock and you are 40 per cent short one year then you are losing forty out of three hundred bottles. If you hold six years’ stock, then the proportion, forty out of six hundred, is much lower.’
Indeed, the best brands can be distinguished most clearly by a combination of adequate stocks of vin de reserve and an ability to not sell the finished product until it is at least three years old, over twice the legal minimum. Not all the wines have to be perfect. An acid vintage like 1984 can come in handy later when there is not enough natural acidity in the next year’s wine. These reserve wines are carefully cherished. Both Krug and Bollinger keep them in magnums to reduce any chance of oxidization (the little bit of residual sugar sets off a slight second fermentation and the resulting carbonic acid pushes out any oxygen), so they can keep them for seven years or even longer. Of course there are other, poorer wines left over from one vintage to another. These are often refermented with better wines the next year – up to 15 per cent in a cuvée.
BLENDING
Once the wine has been fermented and centrifuged to remove bacteria which are too small for even the finest filter, and the dose of reserve wine has been added, it is ready for blending. Before the wine starts the prise de mousse, the second fermentation which will result in the champagne we know and love, it has to be blended, the moment at which the best champagnes acquire their character. For the whole process from grape to malo is merely the preparation of a raw material for the second fermentation. ‘At this stage in the champagne-making process,’ wrote Tom Stevenson, ‘we have a rather dry, but unremarkable white wine called vin clair, fully fermented in the traditional, but universally practised winemaking process. The style and quality of this base wine is generally disappointing – over-acidic, clumsy and unbalanced – but it is exactly those qualities which will eventually provide all the excitement, panache and perfect balance of a fine sparkling wine.’
Indeed, the most remarkable aspect of the methode champenoise is the exceptional extent to which it enables winemakers to manipulate the grape juice. The second fermentation in bottle exploits latent riches in grape-juice which normal winemaking methods leave untouched. In a sense, the manufacture of champagne begins where that of ordinary wine ends. As Patrick Forbes put it: ‘Until the still wines are blended, before their transformation into sparkling champagne, everything about the process and the product has been workmanlike. By contrast, blending should have less precise, more artistic objects.’ In Jancis Robinson’s words: ‘The champagne purist wants the weight of the Pinot Noir and the fruitiness of the Pinot Meunier to be counterbalanced by the aristocratic vitality of the Chardonnay.’ To achieve this balance requires a sensitivity greater than that of a mere technician. The industrial side takes over again with the actual second fermentation and the dosage with liqueur before the bottles are finally labelled – and drunk. In bottle the wine starts a new life. Pouring a wine into a tank for a second fermentation, the method used for many lesser sparkling wines, is a sentence of death, while the méthode champenoise gives the young wine a new lease of life and enables it to grow up.
Unfortunately, the legitimate way to create a style before the second fermentation, is horribly difficult. In other winegrowing regions fame is anchored on a specific patch of soil, whereas in Champagne it depends on an intricate network of elements which cannot be assembled overnight. A firm needs reliable supplies of grapes, either from its own vineyards or from long-term agreements with growers, and the ability to collect small, separate lots of wines of different qualities, which is an increasingly difficult task as the wines are fermented in such increasingly large batches, and stocks of old wines. Few houses can match Bollinger’s ability to assemble twelve different lots of wine from Aÿ alone. And some major crus, notably Cramant, are owned by a few houses, or tied up with historic links with the same firms. Not surprisingly, then, the same few houses have retained their reputation for a century or more.
All the serious firms have complicated arrangements, ranging from share-cropping to simple long-term relationships, which ensure the same stability of supply as other firms have with the vineyards and the vignerons who supply them. ‘It’s important to know the background of the vines and the grapes before you start blending,’ as Christian Billy of Pol Roger told me. If, like Roederer or Bollinger, they have vineyards covering the majority of their requirements, so much the better, even though a respectable pedigree does not guarantee success. Pommery was making very ordinary wines for a long time after the war despite its magnificent vineyards – which were asset-stripped by Moët during their brief ownership of the brand.
Unfortunately, serious winemakers looking for the creation of a specific – and continuing – style of wine by blending a well-defined selection of wines from different regions or different grape varieties are probably in the minority since the majority of champagnes, in quantity anyway, are produced on such a scale that individuality is impossible; winemakers can only try to produce a decent quality, neither too acid nor too heavy, for there is a great and growing gap between the merely ‘correct’ champagnes and more individual wines. To an outsider the blending of a serious brand seems a nightmare – the chef de caves at Bollinger used to have to taste 3,000 casks at the mind-bending rate of a hundred and fifty a day.
I first grasped the principles some years ago at a dejeuner des vins clairs – a most elegant combination of tasting and lunch – given by Taittinger to the stewards of its estates. They brought along the wines they had produced that year. I found some of them, including some of the Chardonnays from the finest crus, decidedly flat and bland. They laughed at my naivety. In a proper assemblage you have to avoid wines that are too obvious, they said. So you need wines which are merely ‘correct’ to provide a neutral base and reduce the obviousness of the blend. This is why in a splendid vintage year you need the less intense wines from lesser crus. In the words of André Lallier of Deutz: ‘Every wine has its own place in the blend.’
But even the most conservative firms recognize the need for change, albeit within their own stylistic formats, after all they’ve survived, often for hundreds of years by following their customers’ requirements. They admit they are now, consciously, making lighter wines with more Chardonnay than they were at the end of the war. ‘In the 1920s our wine was three-quarters Pinot Noir,’ says Christian Billy of Pol Roger. ‘Now it is far lighter, we are still looking’ – successfully – ‘for elegance and balance.’ Similarly, Andre Lallier lightened the family’s Cuvée William Deutz by a judicious blend with some Meunier. When Krug brought out its Grande Cuvée, lighter than the predecessor Cuvée Privée, great was the outcry among the more fundamentalist Krugistes. But as the Krugs said: ‘You don’t play Bach in the 1980s the same way you would have done in the 1930s, and yet Bach is still eternal.’
The orthodox way to view house styles is to work from (down from, its disciples would say) Krug, even now the heaviest, most ‘serious’ of champagnes, moving gradually through Bollinger towards those such as Pol Roger or Taittinger and the lighter end of the spectrum – as you can see from the rather simplistic style guide I provide. This table, which includes most of the better champagnes which are produced in sufficient quantities to be distributed outside the region, gives some indication of what to expect.
Champagne styles
Lighter styles – probably including a greater proportion of Chardonn
ay
Billecart-Salmon
De Saint Gall
Demoiselle
Henriot
Laurent-Perrier
Piper-Heidsieck
Pol Roger
Salon
More traditional blends
Alexandre Bonnet
Alfred Gratien
Armand de Brignac
Besserat de Bellefon
Bruno Paillard
Cattier
Delamotte
Nicolas Feuillatte
Deutz
Jacquart
Devaux
Drappier
Joseph Perrier
Louis Roederer
Moët & Chandon
Mumm
Palmer
Philipponnat
Ruinart
Thienot
The more robust blends, probably including a larger percentage of Pinot Noir
Bollinger
Charles Heidsieck
Gosset
Jacques Selosse
Krug
Tarlant
Veuve Clicquot
THE SECOND FERMENTATION AND MATURATION
For these wines the basic style has been set with the blending but of course their qualities are affected by the time they spend sur lattes, refermenting and maturing in bottle – ideally for longer than the fifteen-month minimum. Things were worse in the 1930s when some champagnes were designed to be drunk within a few months to save the capital of the – generally impoverished – producers and were deliberately stored in warehouses in temperatures which went up to 18°C. Even today the second fermentation can be over in a couple of weeks, while it could last for up to three months.
The Story of Champagne Page 24