Bubbly 102

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Georg Riedel – of the eponymous glass company – is as obsessed about wine as he is about wine glasses. Now, I know Mr. Riedel pretty well, which is why I shall violate The New York Sun’s admirable use of the honorific and call him Georg. When we last visited him and his wife, Eva, for dinner at their home, Georg played sommelier and I cooked.


“Let’s start with some champagne,” he suggested. I couldn’t help but feel an excitement about what he would pick. After all, the particularity of champagne is that you choose not just the house but also versions offered by each house: non-vintage, vintage, super-luxury, etc.


More than any other wine, champagne is a product that, because of how it’s made, celebrates a manufactured consistency. Indeed, champagne producers publicly congratulate themselves on the lack of variability in their offerings, especially the mainstay non-vintage Brut bottlings.


Unlike most great wines, French Champagnes are usually assembled from numerous, sometimes far-flung vineyards. They’re often composed of several grape varieties and multiple vintages. The final flavor is adjusted by a dollop of sweetness called a dosage.


Anyway, I knew that whatever Georg exhumed would not be ordinary. And, sure enough, it was not: It was Dom Perignon, the famous super-luxury bottling made by Moet & Chandon. “Big deal,” you say. “I see Dom Perignon everywhere.” Not so fast. This was a special-for-the-cognoscenti 1990 vintage of Dom Perignon Oenotheque ($250 to $280 at Astor Wines and others).


Dom Perignon Oenotheque is a late-disgorged wine. A supply of already bottled Dom Perignon is left on its lees, or sediment, and cellared in frigid chalk caves. Because the sediment is disgorged only when the wine is released, this is a different aging experience (for the wine) than simply cellaring a bottle. It’s richer and more dimensional because of the extended lees contact. And it’s fresher tasting because it hasn’t been exposed to air until the moment of disgorgement. Not least, those cold chalk cellars further preserve freshness and reduce oxidation.


To drink his Dom Perignon Oenotheque, George served it in Riedel’s enormous Sommelier series Burgundy glass. If filled to the brim, it holds 37 ounces. (A standard wine bottle holds 25.3 ounces.) This is a glass so big you could auction its air rights. The idea of the glass is to provide red Burgundies a massive amount of air space in which to collect pinot noir’s famous perfuminess. It works. Once you get past the seeming pretension of such a large glass, you begin to appreciate the difference it affords.


But for Champagne? What about the bubbles? “To hell with the bubbles,” Georg replied. “Taste the wine.”


He was right. Georg was interested in the profoundly pinot-noirish quality, and the big glass emphasized that. This was wine, not just fizz. It was a revelation.


HERE’S THE (FROTHY) DEAL


You can spend dizzying amounts of money on super-luxury bottlings such as Moet’s Dom Perignon; Roederer’s Cristal; Taittinger’s Comtes de Champagne; Perrier-Jouet’s Fleur de Champagne; and Krug’s Clos de Mesnil, among many others.


Good as these super-luxury cuvees are, remember there’s a mighty amount of marketing involved. Like stereo equipment, the best Champagnes are ones you’ve likely never heard of. France’s Champagne region has 15,000 grape growers. The great majority of them don’t make their own wine. Instead, they sell their grapes to the region’s 260 or so shippers and cooperatives. The shippers own very little land themselves – just 12% – even though they sell nearly three-quarters of all the Champagne produced.


In recent years, as happened in Burgundy and elsewhere in Europe, grape growers in Champagne are increasingly estate-bottling their own wines. Although the big Champagne houses insist that blending from so many vineyards gives them opportunities unavailable to a single grower, the reality is that this much-touted blending allows them to create ever more product rather than ever-finer Champagne. Alone among France’s major wine regions, Champagne sales have increased in recent years. They are stretched thin – and you can taste it.


What you want are the best single-grower champagnes. Their champagnes are more distinctive than most of the mass-marketed bottlings of the big houses. They don’t spend much, if any, money on glossy advertising or sponsoring yacht races. Inevitably, some grower champagnes are better than others.


ANDRE CLOUET GRAND RESERVE BRUT NON-VINTAGE CHAMPAGNE A rarely seen producer creating unusu ally rich, dense, creamy-textured Champagne from 100%- rated vineyards in the Bouzy district. (Vineyards in Champagne are rated, point by point, on a scale of 80% to 100%.)


Bouzy is famous for growing Champagne’s best pinot noir, and this all-pinot noir Champagne shows why. This grower makes 5,000 cases that are divided among several different bottlings. It’s stunning Champagne and a steal at $24 to $29 a bottle at Morrell & Co., and Astor Wines, respectively. A more expensive, and finer, bottling called 1911 is available for $69 at Smith & Vine in Brooklyn.


MUMM DE CRAMANT NON-VINTAGE CHAMPAGNE


Mumm is a big house whose Champagnes are not much to my taste. But it does issue a singular, in every sense, Champagne that’s worth seeking out. Composed entirely of chardonnay from the 100%-rated village of Cramant, this Champagne is unusual for its delicate, lower effervescence.


This wine used be called Cremant de Cramant, a cremant signifying a sparkling wine with about half the pressure of a regular Champagne. Since European wine law now allows other regions to use the word cremant to signal a sparkling wine made by the Champagne method, Mumm dropped the term from its label, hence Mumm de Cramant.


Also worth noting is that this single village, single grape wine also comes from a single vintage. But French law requires that vintage-designated Champagne must be aged for at least three years. To emphasize a fresh fruitiness, Mumm releases this wine after two years, which precludes the use of a vintage date.


What matters is the taste, which is lovely: delicate and unusually creamy in texture because of the lower effervescence. Is it Champagne as is conventionally understood? Not really. But it is unusual and exceptionally appetizing, especially as an aperitif ($55 to $60 at Morrell & Co. and New York Wine Exchange, among others).


The New York Sun

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