Single Vineyard Champagne – Laugh or Lick Your Lips?

Posted on 24/10/2014 by dccrossley

The common view of Champagne is that it’s a great apéritif, something to get things going before the real wines are wheeled out. It usually comes from a Grand Marque, one of the big houses dotted around Reims and lining the grand Avenue de Champagne in Epernay. Some people are aware of “Grower Champagnes”, but most of the big houses would rather we didn’t, and some are incredibly rude about them. Insufficient reserves to blend into the current vintage, too few different vineyard sites and just too reliant on the weather in each harvest are all criticisms I’ve heard. Not to mention remarks about how they are just darlings of the wine journos. But then the big houses are losing tonnes of grapes every time a grower stops selling to them. That hurts, especially when some of the Grand Marques have an aristocratic heritage used to the growers doffing their berets with due deference.

The so-called grower revolution is old news now, but what has been born slowly out of it is an increasing appreciation of what I like to call “gastronomic Champagne”, a wine to drink through the meal. This is where the individuality of grower Champagnes really scores for me, and one of the most individual manifestations of this style is the single vineyard Champagne.

Single vineyards are not new in Champagne’s sub-regions. They existed before Krug bought Clos du Mesnil, although this fascinating site, partly surrounded by village houses, is perhaps the first one might describe as iconic. Or does that honour go to Philipponnat’s Clos des Goisses, for me perhaps the perfect Champagne vineyard, a steep slope facing the Marne Canal just east of Mareuil-s-Ay.

In an article in Tong Magazine in 2009, Essi Avellan MW listed more than fifty single vineyard wines. The list has grown since then. Some are in specified Clos (walled or not), reflected in their name (Clos Cazals, Clos Saint Hilaire), whilst others are just tiny parcels, taking the term micro-terroir to its extreme with the wines of Cédric Bouchard (some of whose vineyards struggle to reach 0.2 hectares).

Why are these wines worthy of our attention and worth seeking out? Surely they are just a clever marketing ploy to give prestige to a producer’s range, a wine that they can charge quite a bit more for but that will ultimately lack the balance of a bigger blend? My belief is that on the contrary, they add a new dimension to our appreciation of Champagne as “a wine”, and they help us understand the potential of the Champagne terroir to produce something new and different, not necessarily better.

Of course, the Grand Marques have been happy to produce single vineyard wines and charge a premium for them, and pretty good they are too. Apart from Krug, we have the likes of Billecart-Salmon, Cattier, Taittinger and Drappier among others. Below is a list of my own personal favourites, but remember that they all have their own distinctive personalities, so it’s a case of finding out which you like yourself. But they are well worth the effort of exploring. Experiment, try them with food and you will see what I mean.

My favourite single vineyard Champagnes

  • Ulysse Colin Blanc de Noirs
  • Philipponnat Clos des Goisses
  • Veuve Fourny Clos du Notre Dame
  • Cattier Clos du Moulin
  • Taittinger Folies de la Marquetterie
  • Pierre Peters Les Chetillons
  • Krug Clos du Mesnil
  • Cédric Bouchard (maybe start with) Roses de Jeanne Les Ursules
  • Cédric Bouchard Creux d’Enfer rosé
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Why Blog – A Kind of Mission Statement

Posted on 24/10/2014 by dccrossley

I began this blog after some years of talking about wine elsewhere, occasionally in print, frequently on-line, because I have a passion for what I call the wider world of wine. There’s so much out there to enjoy beyond established regions stashed in collectors’ vaults and the cellars of Michelin’s finest restaurants. Wine writing has always had a conservative edge to it in the past, and that’s fine. There are great wine writers, and wine experts (not always the same thing), but few willing to promote the outer reaches of wine, even if their numbers are increasing.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love the classics. But as they become prohibitively expensive we are lucky that improvements in vineyard management and winemaking have brought to light a wealth of other wines which no one wanted to write about twenty years ago. At the same time, a younger generation is taking over family domaines in regions previously thought under performing. Their fired up enthusiasm means that there are new stars in the making in the older, established regions as well as the new.

Australian wine writer Max Allen recently wrote on Jancis Robinson’s Purple Pages about the criticisms made by fellow Aussie Huon Hooke, of Australia’s sommelier community, the suggestion being that they were forcing their enthusiasms for obscure wines onto restaurant lists at the expense of the established greats. This type of criticism is not new – we’ve heard the same coming from some quarters in North America.

I’d argue that Hooke and others are being way too narrow in their definition of what can now constitute “fine wine”, and what kind of wines are the best partners for food. Hooke may find some of the wines he sees on Sydney lists “obscure”, and some he may not have come across before. For I fear that many critics focus their palates quite narrowly, such is the need to appeal to an existing audience with a set of established tastes, despite the breadth of wine out there. It’s not difficult to imagine, for example, a Bordeaux expert not knowing how to react to a Sopron Kekfrankos or a Californian version of Jura’s Trousseau, let alone “natural” wines, “pet-nats” and orange wines. Frightening new techniques and styles from Ribeira Sacra to Friuli, or Georgia to Niagara are well off the page for those schooled in the 1855 Classification and the hierarchy of Grand Crus on the Cote d’Or.

I don’t mean to focus criticism on one individual. There are many who will dismiss new wines and new regions. I don’t doubt that many new wines benefit from the spiralling cost of Burgundy and Bordeaux, etc. Not all consumers, especially the younger ones, have the salaries, or the invitations to prestigious tastings, that would enable them to taste such wines on a regular basis. So those who write about wines which have now become high end luxuries are speaking to an increasingly rarefied audience. I think my first ever bottles of Latour and Mouton cost me under £30 each, how times have changed! You’d be pushed to find a good bottle of village Puligny for that now, and you could certainly find a Cru Bourgeois for that kind of money.

My direct experience of the market for wine is London, one of several exciting wine cities seemingly drowning right now in new independent wine shops, restaurants with “by-the-glass” lists and wine bars, not to mention wine from the cask at street markets and wine “car boots”. At no time I can remember since falling in love with wine in the 1980s has there been so much opportunity to consume so many different wines in this city. The excitement seems something akin to a revolution, mirrored in Tokyo, Barcelona, Paris, Berlin, even conservative Vienna.

It’s not just a great time to drink wine, it’s a great time to share one’s love and passion for it. I shall write about new wines and I’ll write about old wines. The thing is not to be afraid of new flavours. There’s good wine in abundance, whether that be Lopez de Heredia Rioja and Roulot Meursault, or Overnoy Pupillin and Scholium Project Californians. And especially if it’s Bereche Champagne and Equipo-Navazos Sherry.

I’ll tell you what I’ve been drinking, where, and sometimes who with. I’ll tell you where I’ve been buying wine, where I’ve been eating, and what books about wine I’ve been reading. And I’ll share the wine makers I’ve visited and their regions. In doing so, I hope to turn some of my enthusiasms into yours.

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