Dom Perignon

Issue: October 31, 1995

300 years ago a monk named Dom Pérignon developed the essential methods still used today to make Champagne By Per-Henrik Mansson and Ted Loos Aweek to ten days before each harvest, the master vintner would perform a meticulous ritual. Every year it was the same: Bunches of grapes--all picked from individual sections of a 40-acre estate--were put on the windowsill overnight to cool. The next morning, always on an empty stomach, he began his tasting. As he carefully sampled the grapes, he began to formulate the assemblage of different grapes in his mind. Then he used intuition--and maybe a bit of divine inspiration--to decide how to marry the different parcels and the proportions each site would play in the final blend. By seeking out the best fruit for his top cuvées, he showed an unusual interest in quality. It may not be unusual by today's standards, but this vintner was a Benedictine monk who fine-tuned the concept of "selection" more than 300 years ago. Both his methods and his results were quite revolutionary for the 17th century. Thus Dom Pierre Pérignon created the legendary "vin de Pérignon." His blanc de noirs, a white bubbly made from red grapes, became the world's first outstanding sparkling wine and changed the history of Champagne. When he arrived at the Abbey of St.-Pierre d'Hautvillers in 1668, the area north of the town of Epernay in the Champagne region was known for sheep and cereal crops. From the age of 28, when he was named head of the monastery, Dom Pérignon spent nearly half a century as cellarmaster and administrator of the abbey on the slopes above the river Marne. By the time of his death at age 76 in 1715, he had made himself into the greatest man of wine who ever lived, according to Richard Fetter, author of Dom Pérignon: Man and Myth. "Who else can you look at who has so single-handedly changed the face of a region?" Fetter asks. "I don't think anyone else can make that claim." Did he invent champagne? Well, yes and no. Granted, he wasn't the first to produce sparkling wine, and he didn't create the méthode champenoise now used to make Champagne today. This technique involves adding to an already fermented still wine yeasts and a sweet mixture that trigger a second fermentation in the bottle, producing the well-known bubbles. Pérignon couldn't have understood exactly how yeasts worked, since Louis Pasteur's discoveries came much later. But le vin du père Pérignon was a forerunner of the elegant Champagnes we know today. The monk raised the making of sparkling wine to an art form. Because his product impressed the epicures of his time, he placed Champagne on the map as a region with the potenial to make great bubbly. In a sense, Pérignon helped make Champagne (the region) what it is today, even though Champagne (the drink) is now produced in a quite different manner. Over the centuries, historians and others have wondered whether Dom Pérignon's wines were the result of a deep secret, some magic formula that disappeared when he died, just a few days later than Louis XIV. Historical evidence suggests that the monk's success in producing the first fine sparkling wine was due to a combination of factors. Above all, Pérignon focused his efforts on improving the quality of still wines through strict vineyard husbandry and his knack for selecting and blending the right grapes. While some European winemakers already blended various wines to make their final cuvées, Pérignon assembled grapes, not just vats of wine. No other 17th-century vigneron is known to have taken the concept of "selection" as far as he did. Pérignon's wine turned bubbly almost certainly by accident, at least in the beginning. He usually bottled his wine during the third week in March because at that time it seemed he could produce the most bubbles. Unhappy with the temperature of his cellar, Pérignon built a new one in the cool rock on the property. He apparently understood how important constant, low temperatures were for the quality of his wines. The big difference between Pérignon's system and the méthode champenoise is that the bubbles in Pérignon's wine were the result of an interrupted alcohol fermentation. This is how it worked: The wines had only partially fermented in the fall as winter approached and the temperature dropped in the abbey's cellars, which interupted the alcohol fermentation and left some residual su gar in the wines. As warm weather returned in the spring, however, the residual sugar prompted the fermentation to resume. Left to itself, this process often produced an oily, yellow wine that was undrinkable. It was already known that wine would referment in the spring, but Dom Pérignon managed to gain control over nature and produce sparkling wine more consistently. His genius lay in his ability to improve each winemaking step, from the pruning of the vines to the bottling of the wines. Dom Pérignon had a sharp mind inspired by the rigorous logic of Cartesian philosophy. He had been schooled in advanced theological studies since the age of 18, when he chose to enter the Benedictine order. It has been said that nothing focuses the mind like a life of celibacy and communion with God, and Pérignon's achievements are as close to proof as we are likely to get. As the harvest got under way, Pérignon kept firm control over the process. Sometimes pickers would make several passages in a vineyard to pick just the type of grapes needed for the monk's different blends, ensuring that they were harvested at the correct maturity levels. Although the Church may have taught forgiveness, Pérignon was a shrewd businessman who had high standards and severely punished sloppy work. A vineyard police force vigilantly enforced Pérignon's dictates. He forbade pickers from eating grapes while harvesting them because he feared they would choose the best fruit; they were not allowed to eat bread on the job because he feared that crumbs would fall into the basket and pollute the harvest. Grape thieves received years in jail for their crime. To obtain grapes with finesse, Pérignon demanded that vines be pruned to rise only two feet above the ground, while an average of four feet was common in most neighboring vineyards. This severe pruning lowered yields, and probably improved the wine's flavors. And he threatened to take to court any worker who pruned in the rain, because he believed it would damage the vine. When the grapes arrived in buckets hauled on a cart by a mule or a donkey, Pérignon stood in the winery dressed in a hooded robe tightened at the waist by a leather belt, the traditional garb of the Benedictine monks. This was the most important moment of the year. For each cuvée, he made sure that the right types of grapes were placed on the press in the proportions he had determined. For his top vats, he insisted on using only tiny Pinot Noir berries. Unlike many of his fellow vintners, he refused to use white grapes because he felt they oxidized easily and produced heavy wine not to his taste. He vinified the must from each pressing separately. Grapes were left to drop their juices lightly for a while, creating first-run juice. Then heavier pressing was applied, for the first and then the second tailles. Like today's quality Champagne producers, he refused to use the more rustic wine made from the third pressing. The best vintners working today go to great lengths to protect their wines from having any contact with air, which could oxidize and ruin them. Three centuries ago, Pérignon and his team perfected a sophisticated contraption to minimize this contact. To rack their wines, they linked the barrels with metal pipes so that the wine would siphon from one barrel to another. Pérignon was only able to channel his perfectionist tendencies into developing a superior wine because of the resources of the Abbey of St-Pierre d'Hautvillers. He was backed by a well-run, highly disciplined organization, the Benedictine Order. It kept him in the same monastery for 47 years, which was considered a long tenure even back then. The prosperity enjoyed at the abbey sprang to a great extent from Pérignon's ability to make the most of his vineyards. He sold off lesser parcels or faraway vineyards to consolidate holdings around the abbey. And he discovered, as vintners after him also have, that a quality-oriented approach boosted the wine's reputation, which then enhanced its price. Pérignon's wines--identified by the abbey's symbol, a cross imprinted on the wax covering the cork--sold for much higher prices than average wines from the region, mostly still red wines. The signs of prosperity were unmistakable: The abbey expanded its facilities, and the number of monks who resided there doubled during Pérignon's tenure. Since it was the days before sturdy, thick-glass bottles had been introduced, the abbey suffered enormous losses from bottles that exploded when the pressure built up. One year, 1,560 out of 2,381 exploded, or 65 percent of production; another year it was 1,100 out of 1,418 bottles, or 77 percent, according to René Gandilhon's authoritative work, Birth of Champagne: Dom Pierre Pérignon. Such losses could be devastating, and they deterred many lesser lights among local vintners. According to Fetter, in the Montagne de Reims, an area of Champagne north of the Marne Valley where Pérignon lived, vignerons didn't try sparkling wine for another 100 years. The reputation of the vin du père Pérignon, however, spread to the court of Louis XIV and to the king himself. The wines showed considerable finesse, at least by the standards of the rustic wines made back then, and became the toast of the finest tables in Europe. But the tribute that rings most true comes in the opinion of the brotherhood that nourished Pérignon's talent. A full 100 years after Pérignon made his last wine there, Dom Gossard, the last cellarmaster at Hautvillers, described the master's ability to marry grapes this way: "Never once did he make a mistake." A Deserved Reputation Dom Pérignon is overexposed, expensive--and worth it, based on our tasting By Per-Henrik Mansson Named after a 17th-century monk, Champagne Dom Pérignon is the quintessential prestige cuvée: it comes from the best vineyards; it's produced only in the best vintages; it's expensive ($89 in U.S. retail stores for the '88); and it has an interesting story behind it. Even though virtually every Champagne house makes a special prestige cuvée, Moët & Chandon's D.P. (as Dom Pérignon is often called), and Louis Roederer's Cristal, are arguably the two most famous. To produce its top cuvée, Moët can draw from more than 1,100 acres of grands crus vineyards that it owns, says Richard Geoffroy, Moët's head winemaker. And within these grands crus, he chooses from the best parcels, or lieux-dits. Among them are: Saran and Les Buissons in the grand cru commune of Cramant; Les Moulins and Les Joyettes in Mesnil-sur-Oger; Les Assises and Les Dames in Bouzy; and old vines from the site of Dom Pérignon's original monastery, the Abbey d'Hautvillers. "I just cherry-pick the best for the Dom Pérignon," says Geoffroy, who uses 25 to 50 different vineyard sites to assemble the D.P. blend. (Up to 2 percent of Dom Pérignon might be made from purchased grapes, but the great majority comes from Moët's own vineyards.) The juice from each vineyard site is fermented separately in stainless steel vats ranging from 6,600 gallons to 13,200 gallons capacity. No wine ever ferments or ages in wood (Moët did away with the use of oak for Dom Pérignon in 1969). All wines undergo malolactic fermentation by winter, at which time Geoffroy and his team blend the D.P. cuvée to a specific style. What that style is became clear during a vertical tasting of Dom Pérignon held in June at the Abbey d'Hautvillers for this story, a tasting that will be repeated in the United States this fall. On Oct. 27, Moët will treat attendees at the New York Wine Experience to a sit-down tasting of seven vintages of Dom Pérignon: 1969, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1982, 1988 and the newly released 1985 Dom Pérignon Rosé. The 11 vintages I tasted in the summer displayed all the finesse, elegance and subtle complexity you could want in a Champagne. Few of the wines were disappointing, although the tasting did reveal the risks of keeping old wines, even in the best of conditions (all bottles came from Moët's own cellars). Three bottles were oxidized or fading, and second bottles had to be fetched (which were much better). Dom Pérignon is not a fat, opulent Champagne that hits you over the head and weighs on your palate with extremely rich flavors. Instead Geoffroy's goal is to make a crisp, firmly structured Champagne that still has some roundness. The fruit shines through, uninhibited by any contact with wood, but the malolactic fermentation softens the full- bodied wine. Dom Pérignon invariably ages on the lees for six to seven years (the 1988 was released in early 1995). This long aging process makes the wine ready to drink on release and develops nuances of flavor that remind you of bread dough, spice and hazelnuts. While Champagne benefits from contact with the lees in the bottle after its secondary fermentation, once these dead yeast cells and other sediments are removed in the disgorgement step of the méthode champenoise, the wine tends to age and lose its freshness. It's best to drink a Champagne like D.P. within a year or so after it's been disgorged. In fact, Moët releases its vintage Dom Pérignon in waves, disgorging more wine as stocks dwindle on the market. Thus the '88s released in early 1995 were disgorged in the fall of 1994, and later releases of '88s will also be disgorged shortly before shipping. The wines I tasted at Hautvillers were disgorged just minutes before being poured. Moët's marketing team in the United States is now promoting Dom Pérignon as a wine that can age well, and this fall they released a wooden box containing one bottle each of D.P. from '66, '76 and '85. (These wines will be disgorged just prior to shipping to maximize their fresh character.) The three-bottle package should retail for around $500, and only 500 of these boxes will be made available in the United States, according to R. John Pellaton of Schieffelin & Somerset Co., the New York-based importer for Moët Champagnes. The '85 is the better of the three wines in the box, according to my recent tasting in France. But, then again, the Dom Pérignon cuvées of the top years from the 1980s are a remarkable series for Moët, as prestige cuvées from those years are for many other Champagne houses. "We had an extraordinary string of vintages with the '82, '83, '85 and '88," says Geoffroy, 40, a former physician who has been in charge of Dom Pérignon since 1985. The current release, the '88, is a good example of the D. P. style: crisp and fresh, with a citrus undertone and a long, beautiful finish. Wine Spectator's tasting panel in New York recently rated it 91 on the 100-point scale and described it as creamy, with a melt-in-the-mouth texture (see July 31). That wine had been disgorged at least six months earlier, while the wine I tasted in Hautvillers was disgorged right in front of me. The D.P. I tasted was tighter and firmer, and the exercise proved that by the time Dom Pérignon arrives in retail stores--following shipment from France and storage in the United States--it's become a rounder, smoother wine than when it started out from the cellars in Epernay. "Like all '88s, it was closed and should open up with time," Geoffroy said at the tasting. The '88 was made from 45 percent Pinot Noir and 55 percent Chardonnay. While it's delicious now, the '88 D.P. is a vintage Champagne that actually should improve and gain complexity for a couple of years in the cellar. My favorite wine in the tasting, the '82 (60 percent Chardonnay, 40 percent Pinot Noir), was a joy to drink, so seductive, every sip revealing nutmeg, spice, chocolate, toasted bread, butter and vanilla flavors. Despite a large crop, the grapes that year reached, in Moët's words, "perfect balance between the acidity and sugar." Typical of a great D.P., the '82 is both crisp and caressing in texture. Wine Spectator editors have rated the '82 Dom Pérignon from 93 to 98 points in various tastings over the past eight years. This is one of the greatest Champagnes ever made. Wines like the '82 prove that Dom Pérignon is not just some flashy marketing creation, although the marketing of the brand has helped carve out a special image for D.P. in the Champagne category. While several other Champagnes often score as high as D.P. in Wine Spectator's tastings, none is as well known. In 1935, Moët decided to create a special bottle of Champagne from wine of the '21 vintage. The first D.P. shipment to the United States was 100 cases of 1921 in 1937. Since 1921, Dom Pérignon has been produced in 27 vintages. Like virtually all Champagne houses, Moët officials refuse to reveal specific production and sales figures for its prestige cuvée. They again refused to give figures for this report. This policy creates a perception of scarcity in the marketplace and, therefore, helps support the wine's high price. Insiders in Champagne estimate the production level of Dom Pérignon at around 200,000 cases. (For comparison, Louis Roederer produces from 17,000 to 50,000 cases of Cristal a year.) For nearly 60 years, Moët & Chandon has relentlessly pushed through the message that its Dom Pérignon Champagne is one of the greatest wines. That so many people want to toast their achievements and special moments with Dom Pérignon is testimony to a remarkable marketing and winemaking tour de force. Much of this success is based on D.P.'s consistent quality. "Consistency" is religion at Moët. From D.P.'s marketing team in New York to its winemakers in Epernay, no discussion about this Champagne can be held without much talk about how this luxury product must taste the same, year in and year out. You can see their point. It is a difficult market. Sales of Champagne dropped from a peak of 1.3 million cases in 1987 to 785,000 cases in 1992, a 40 percent decrease. In such a climate, Dom Pérignon seeks to attract more than just the hardcore wine aficionados. To grow, Moët needs to rope in a broader consumer base--people who will buy D.P. as much, if not more, for its image than for the wine itself. D.P. wants to make the same stylistic statement in every vintage it releases. "Our style must come through stronger than the vintages," says Geoffroy. "D.P. is less representative of each vintage due to the art of blending. There is this expectation among our customers, and they want to find 'their' Dom Pérignon. So never can we tell them, well, we didn't do our cuvée very well, but buy it anyway. We must always produce the wine they expect to find." Selected Dom Pérignon Vintages 1988-1959 91 Moët & Chandon Brut Champagne Dom Pérignon 1988 $89 A beautiful wine with a long finish. At first sip this is sharp and crisp, showing lime and citrus flavors, but it turns a bit earthy on the palate and develops yeasty, chalky notes. Try in 1997. 90 Moët & Chandon Brut Champagne Dom Pérignon 1985 $110 Excellent finesse in this wine that is still fresh with lime and citrus, but it also hints at lovely hazelnut, nutmeg and coffee bean notes. A very long orange-peel-scented finish. A touch lighter than the '82. Drinkable now. 93 Moët & Chandon Brut Champagne Dom Pérignon 1982 $150 Seductive and wonderfully balanced, crisp yet it caresses the palate. Has a very complex toasted bread and buttery croissant character along with some nutmeg, spice, chocolate and vanilla notes. At its peak, so drink and enjoy. 88 Moët & Chandon Brut Champagne Dom Pérignon 1980 $135 Fresh and elegant, with characteristic doughy, yeasty flavors and a touch of honey and mocha. Smooth, supple and a touch herbal on the somewhat short finish. 90 Moët & Chandon Brut Champagne Dom Pérignon 1978 $190 A steely, full-bodied and complete Champagne, showing a touch of honey, cedar, butter and spice. Has fruit and lime flavors, with a long finish. Drinkable now. Tasted twice; the first bottle was musty, oxidized and tired. 87 Moët & Chandon Brut Champagne Dom Pérignon 1976 $150 A smooth, silky Champagne that's mature without being oxidized. Has floral and honey notes along with some tart pear and pie crust accents. A bit lighter than the '78, and terrific to drink now. Tasted twice; the first bottle was tired. 90 Moët & Chandon Brut Champagne Dom Pérignon 1973 $175 Light to medium body, this is an elegant, discreet and balanced Champagne that has a creamy, smooth mouth-feel and delivers some truffle, honey, lime and hazelnut notes. Refined finish. Perfect to drink now. 89 Moët & Chandon Brut Champagne Dom Pérignon 1969 $225 A incredibly powerful, full-bodied Champagne that needs food to show its best. It lacks a bit of finesse, but it bursts with flavor--from buttery toast and butterscotch to chocolate, orange peel and grapefruit. 85 Moët & Chandon Brut Champagne Dom Pérignon 1966 $250 A bit light and starts out slow, but it takes off on the long finish. Hints of grapefruit and a slightly herbal character, but the honey notes are attractive. 79 Moët & Chandon Brut Champagne Dom Pérignon 1962 $200 A hard, dry wine that has lost some of its fruit. Austere and has a chalky, drying finish. Drink up if you have any. 84 Moët & Chandon Brut Champagne Dom Pérignon 1959 $300 A nice, mature Champagne that's a bit resinous, with pine nut and vanilla notes. Shows a hint of honey on the chewy, flinty finish. Drinkable now. Tasted twice; the first bottle was oxidized. These vintages of Dom Pérignon were tasted at Moët & Chandon in June by Wine Spectator senior editor Per-Henrik Mansson. It was not a blind tasting.

 

Champagne Trio

It's an opportune time to sample classic vintage Champagne from three excellent years

By Jim Gordon

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You may remember the excitement about a trio of great vintages in Europe that finished out the last decade. For Bordeaux, Burgundy, Barolo and many other regions, the years 1988, 1989 and 1990 produced a procession of top-quality wines virtually unheard of in the annals of wine history.

The same phenomenon occurred in Champagne. But while the wines of Bordeaux and elsewhere from those years were released three to five years ago, and have already been consumed or stashed away in kcellars, the great French Champagnes from 1988, 1989 and 1990 are just reaching wine shops now.

Vintage Champagne provides the most exciting current buying opportunity in a season marked by the release of an often disappointing crop of non-vintage bruts. After blind-tasting more than 160 current-release Champagnes, and spending a week in the region interviewing winemakers and tasting even more wines, our advice is to splurge on the vintage bubbly this year but be cautious about the less expensive, non-vintage bottlings.

This report covers new releases since our last annual tasting report in the Dec. 31, 1995, issue, and also revisits many vintage Champagnes that were previously reviewed but are still on the market.

Vintage Champagne typically costs 50 percent to 100 percent more than nonvintage, but wines like the following that scored at the top of their respective classes are worth it. For 1988, a superbly balanced Dom Pérignon ($89) and powerful Bollinger Grande Année ($60) tied at 93 points out of 100. For 1989, an overlapping release of Bollinger Grande Année (92, $60) was our favorite. And for 1990, with lots of the best names still not released, a bright, lively tasting Louis Roederer (92, $46) leads the pack so far.

The best is probably yet to come. We give 1990 a tentatively higher rating on our vintage chart than the two previous years, and perhaps only a third of the traditional quality leaders have released their 1990s. Dom Pérignon 1990, for example, won't arrive in the shops until late winter or spring.

How to explain the disparity between the high quality of the vintage-dated bubbly and the comparatively low quality of the non-vintage bubbly this year? So-called non-vintage Champagne is really multi-vintage, to use a phrase that Champagne Krug and a few other firms prefer. Typically, a non-vintage brut is made of about 80 to 85 percent base wine from one vintage, and the remainder is reserve wine, primarily from the previous year. The Champenois say this enables them to produce a consistent style from year to year, but clearly the quality can still vary.

The region of Champagne, located northeast of Paris, is the northernmost major wine region in France. Even in a really good year, the grapes here don't ripen to the same levels of flavor and sugar content as they do in an average year elsewhere. The effect of the weather in a lesser year can get into the bottle.

Most winemakers we spoke to said their current non-vintage blends are based on the relatively weak 1992 vintage, but a few others are still based on more reliable 1991 lots of wine, including high-scorers from Paul Bara and Nicolas Feuillatte. Last year, the non-vintage was primarily from 1991, with reserve wine coming primarily from the excellent year of 1990. And indeed, for nine out of 11 of the big brand-name bruts that I spot-checked, the scores were higher last year.

1992 was one of four mediocre to good years from 1991 through 1994 when the weather may not have been disastrous, but did not cooperate in producing really flavorful, ripe grapes. (One telling anecdote is that many houses, including Champagne Krug and G.H. Mumm, are not making any vintage wines from these four years.) The new releases two years ago, three years ago and four years ago were based on 1990, 1989 and 1988, and they were generally better in quality than the current crop. Maybe we got spoiled.

The popular Veuve Clicquot orange label ($40), for example, scored 82 this year versus 87 last year. Bollinger may have released two of the best vintage wines this year, but its usually excellent non-vintage Special Cuvée scored only an average 79. Perrier-Jouët Grand Brut and Laurent-Perrier Brut L.P. also paled in comparison to last year's versions. In our blind tastings, these Champagnes seemed to start out well, with fruity, floral aromas, b ut they didn't provide the fullness of flavor and body we look for, and they turned thin on the finish.

It's a good time to shop for sparkling wines from California and elsewhere if you want to spend less than $30. But if you are prepared to invest in something special for the holidays, or even to lay down in your cellar for future meals and celebrations, take a close look at 1988, 1989 and 1990 Champagnes.

Brothers Rémy and Henri Krug set up a tasting at their headquarters in Reims to demonstrate the differences between the three vintages. They poured nine wines from three of the better villages--not bubbly, but base wines from their supply of vintage reserves used for blending. We tasted 1988, 1989 and 1990 Pinot Noir samples from Ambonnay, three more Pinot Noirs from Verzenay and three Chardonnays from Mesnil.

These generally austere, tart base wines aren't usually much fun to drink, but in this tasting they were fascinating. The Ambonnay '88 was crisp, tight and clean. The Ambonnay '89 tasted much riper, more broad-textured and fruitier. The '90 seemed like a cross between the previous two, with plenty of lively acidity yet with ample fruit flavor, too. These descriptions held up for the Verzenay and Mesnil wines as well. And these same impressions hold for most of the vintage Champagnes that I have blind-tasted over the past three years.

You might call 1988 a classic vintage for Champagne. Claude Taittinger, whose firm specializes in rather light-bodied but bracing, tangy Champagnes, prefers the slightly restrained quality of 1988 over 1990 and 1989. But we preferred the new Taittinger Brut 1990 (90, $52) over the 1988.

The weather during the 1989 growing season was extremely hot and sunny. It produced ripe-tasting, full-blown Champagnes that the Champenois mark down for lacking the classic crisp acidity they want. That makes these Champagnes suspect for aging in their estimation, but we found them quite appealing. At their most extravagant, the '89s have a flavor as rich as white chocolate. But it was a difficult year in the wineries, where grapes sometimes came in too fast and strained winemakers' abilities to keep up with the pace of the harvest. Moët & Chandon winemaker Richard Geoffroy says, "We are among the few that didn't declare 1989, and we're proud of it." For winemaker Jean-Pierre Vincent at Nicolas Feuillatte, 1989 was also too extreme. "It's not Champagne," he says succinctly.

Comparisons of 1989 and 1976 were common. So if you'd like to see how 1976 has fared in the cellar, and you have $280 to spare, try the spectacular and mature, newly released Krug Collection 1976 (93).

No one in Champagne, it seems, has anything bad to say about 1990, however. That's no doubt partly because 1990 is what they are eager to sell right now. But it's also because it was a reasonably ripe, trouble-free vintage that produced an abundance of appealing Champagne. We found four among this year's new releases that scored 90 or better and cost less than $50: Louis Roederer, Moët & Chandon Impérial, Ruinart R de Ruinart and Serge Mathieu.

"1990 is like a new jacket, that you just put it on for the first time and it needs nothing," says Geoffroy. "It has a natural balance and harmony."

As more and more 1990s are released in the next couple of years, we should have even more reason to celebrate the vintage. For now, however, one other vintage deserves special mention: 1985. This fine year is in its full glory now. We found nine 1985s rated 90 points or more that are still available, including three blanc de blancs. These are all worth buying to taste an outstanding year that may be at its peak of perfection.

The outstanding buy in this group is the Charles Heidsieck Brut 1985 (93, $48). The Mumm René Lalou 1985 (92, $50) is so good that you would think it should be drunk right away, but I had a fantastic Mumm 1955 in an Epernay restaurant, Le Vigneron, that makes me think the 1985 will have plenty of good years ahead of it if stored properly.

We sampled 21 blanc de blancs in our blind tastings and 34 rosés. The blanc de blancs were more exciting, providing seven outstanding wines, led by 1988s from Henri Germain and Ayala, and 1985s from Comte Audoin de Dampierre, Krug and Delamotte. Salon's outstanding 1983 is also worth a mention. To see how far the blanc de blancs envelope can be pushed, you might want to try the pungent Dom Ruinart Blanc de Blancs 1988.

Rosé Champagne can be difficult to assess, because the styles vary so widely from house to house. Colors range from a pale amber to bright coral, and the flavors cover the waterfront from earthy and tealike to something as vivid as strawberries. If you want to explore, Charles Heidsieck's Brut Rosé 1985 (93, $55) and Piper-Heidsieck's non-vintage rosé (90, $48) are two good choices.

With the new year approaching, many people are thinking about not only what they will be doing this Dec. 31, but what wine they will have to toast the turn of the millennium as 1999 changes over to 2000. If you are interested in laying away Champagne now, the blind-tasting results that accompany this article will help you make your purchases. For most people, vintage 1990 Champagnes that you can buy now should be perfect.

But if you don't want to stock your cellar ahead of time, the 1995 harvest was well above average in quality, according to the Champenois. And that's the vintage that will form the core of the non-vintage Champagnes on sale in late 1999.

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What Champagne Is All About

Champagne, the region, came before Champagne, the sparkling wine. And although winemakers in certain parts of the world (particularly California) persist in using the term champagne for their own sparkling wines, French Champagne from the Marne Valley is the original.

Bubbles are not the only thing that sets the wines of Champagne apart from those of others. Over the centuries this northerly wine region has adopted its own set of rules to make wines that defy the cold winters and short growing seasons. Growers here rarely harvest grapes that are ripe enough to make normal table wines without a heavy addition of sugar. So the vineyard owners and wine merchants of the past made a virtue out of necessity. They produced a still wine that was low in alcohol and high in acidity, then put it through a second fermentation to raise the alcohol level and create the effervescence. This second fermentation takes place in the individual bottles, and leaves behind used-up yeast cells (called the lees) that give the wine extra character as it ages for at least a year and a half and often up to three years or more on the lees.

Champagne also tries to outsmart nature by using different grape varieties. The three main ones are the red-wine grapes Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier (which are pressed right after harvest to produce a nearly clear juice) and the white-wine grape Chardonnay. The weather in some years and in some locations favors one over the other two. Most Champagnes are blended from at least two of these before the secondary fermentation. Bottles labeled Blanc de Blancs are made only from Chardonnay.

Winemakers get further flexibility from their widely scattered vineyards, which bring in the effects of different soils and microclimates, and from the practice of blending two or more years together to make the traditional non-vintage Champagne.

Champagne may be known as the drink of celebration, and it does go very well with appetizers, or is quite enjoyable as an apéritif. But it is also fine to drink after you sit down at the table. Its crisp acidity makes a good match with many first courses that feature fish or shellfish, and it can be very good with lighter meat and poultry dishes, too.

--J.G.

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A Value-Oriented Upstart

Perhaps the best value in Champagne this year comes from one of the least-known Champagne houses: Nicolas Feuillatte. The non-vintage Brut Réserve Particulière (89 points, $22) is a real find, especially while many of the other houses' non-vintage bruts are lackluster.

But that's not all this modern, upstart winery is good at. Feuillatte (pronounced foo-YAHT) also has an outstanding 1985 prestige cuvée on the market, a very good 1986 vintage brut and one of the best non-vintage rosés I tasted this year.

Although it may seem like Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne came out of nowhere, it is, in fact, the product of a very well-financed, high-tech winery that can pick and choose the best grapes from 4,600 acres of vineyards that it controls. Established only 20 years ago, it is still an infant compared with the grandes marques of the region, but it is now the third-largest wine producer in Champagne.

The winery's success lies in the com-bination of the worldly, appealing personality of Nicolas Feuillatte, the man, and the vast resources of a growers' cooperative in the little town of Chouilly, near Epernay. Nicolas Feuillatte, the Champagne, is the cream of the crop of Champagnes produced by the giant Centre Vinicole de Champagne.

The cooperative's 4,800 member-growers harvested enough grapes for total sales in 1996 of 430,000 cases of Champagne. But only grapes from the best acreage--the 35 percent that is rated premier cru and grand cru--are used for the Nicolas Feuillatte brand, which predicted total sales in 1996 of 167,000 cases.

"I know it's a cooperative, but I like to call it a cellar," says Feuillatte, to distinguish it from the generally mediocre quality of wine from most French wine cooperatives. "We are slowly stepping up to be a grande marque." Born in France, the 70-year-old businessman says he became an American citizen in 1955 and spent 20 years living in New York while working for his family's restaurant-supply business.

Feuillatte inherited 30 acres of vineyard in Champagne's Montagne de Reims district in 1970 and started bottling his own Champagne five years later. With the help of friends in New York and Paris, Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne was served at high-society events. He began to develop this new brand on a larger scale. "But to have the guts to do something different, you also have to have the money," he says.

Feuillatte sold his brand to the Centre Vinicole de Champagne in 1986 and agreed to stay on as spokesman. Since then, a team of professionals hired by the cooperative has shaped the Feuillatte Champagne of today. The cellarmaster, with 21 harvests under his belt, is Jean-Pierre Vincent. The executive in charge of the whole operation is Jean-Marc Pottiez, whom the cooperative hired away from Fortant de France, the thoroughly modern, fast-growing Languedoc winery, after a nationwide executive search.

This crew is out to prove that big can be beautiful. With a harvest in 1996 large enough to supply more than 1.2 million cases of Feuillatte for later release, it will be interesting to see if the high standards of quality can be maintained as the quantity increases. On the production side, Vincent has state-of-the-art equipment to handle and monitor the Champagne with care, four years' worth of stock aging in his mammoth, 1 million-square-foot cellars and more than 45 base wines to choose from when making a blend. On the marketing side, Feuillatte has eye-catching packaging (especially for the prestige cuvée Palmes d'Or), an elegant boutique on rue Fauberge St.-Honoré in Paris and an apparent commitment to value.

Says Pottiez, "Since we started, we have been using all the elements of modern technology to allow a good quality-to-price ratio."

--J.G.

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Jim Gordon's Top Champagne Picks

wine / price / score

KRUG Brut Champagne 1985 / 94 / $120

A seductive, fully mature Champagne that's rich in texture, full in body, still quite firm in balance.

BOLLINGER Brut Champagne Grande Année 1988 / 93 / $60

A rich, mature bubbly that combines power and subtlety.

COMTE AUDOIN DE DAMPIERRE Blanc de Blancs Champagne 1985 / 93 / $97

Mellow, and subtle in flavor, smooth and soft in texture.

CHARLES HEIDSIECK Brut Champagne 1985 / 93 / $48

Suave, satisfying and flavorful, blending wonderful toasty, earthy aromas with mellow and mature fruit flavors.

CHARLES HEIDSIECK Brut Rosé Champagne 1985 / 93 / $55

Robust, and imposing, this has distinctive toasty aromas, vivid fruit flavors and accents of mushroom and walnut.

KRUG Brut Champagne Collection 1976 / 93 / $280

Proudly shows its age in the honeyed, nutty, smoky flavors, but retains freshness and is crisp in texture.

MOET & CHANDON Brut Champagne Cuvée Dom Pérignon 1988 / 93 / $89

Offers toasty, earthy aromas, lively but mellow fruit flavors.

BOLLINGER Brut Champagne Grande Année 1989 / 92 / $60

A real mouthful of ripe fruit flavors, delicate spice and lingering vanilla notes. This is smooth and creamy in texture.

NICOLAS FEUILLATTE Brut Champagne Cuvée Palmes d'Or 1985 / 92 / $80

Powerful, vibrant and intensely fruity. Has a broad array of flavors, a smooth texture and is well balanced.

G.H. MUMM Brut Champagne René Lalou 1985 / 92 / $50

A delectable Champagne--from the bouquet of honey, spice and almond through the creamy texture and lingering finish.

POL ROGER Brut Rosé Champagne 1988 / 92 / $53

An elegant marriage of fruit and toast gives this depth.

LOUIS ROEDERER Brut Champagne 1990 / 92 / $46

This has everything you want in a Champagne: Bright, lively fruit flavors, a smooth, creamy texture and a lingering finish.

RUINART Brut Rosé Champagne Dom Ruinart 1986 / 92 / $98

A distinctive copper color and mature, vivid flavors give this rosé lots of personality.

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Rating Selected Champagne Vintages

1990 / 90-94* / Fine balance and full flavor* / Drink or hold

1989 / 88 / Extremely ripe and generous / Drink

1988 / 90 / Outstanding, beautifully balanced / Drink or hold

1987 / 81 / Acceptable, but few vintage bottlings / Drink

1986 / 86 / Very good quality, lean in style / Drink

1985 / 96 / Superb balance, great structure and flavor / Drink or hold

1984 / 79 / Unexceptional quality; large harvest / Drink

1983 / 83 / Good, pleasant Champagnes / Drink

1982 / 94 / Rich, complex, with abundant flavor / Drink

1979 / 91 / Classy, elegant, aging well / Drink

1976 / 88 / Ripe, opulent year / Drink

1975 / 92 / Bold but balanced Champagnes / Drink

* Preliminary analysis based on limited releases.

Vintage ratings: 95-100, classic; 90-94, outstanding; 85-89, very good; 80-84, good; 70-79, average; 60-69, below average; 50-59, poor.

Drinkability: "Drink" means most of the wines of the vintage are ready to drink; "hold" means most of the age-worthy wines have not yet matured.

SOURCE: WINE SPECTATOR

12/31/96

 

 

What Champagne Is All About

Champagne Gets Serious

With new names to discover and great vintages to savor, it's time to stock up

By Jim Gordon

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As a host of outstanding Champagnes from an expanding spectrum of Champagne makers reaches wine shops, this is a season of discovery for wine lovers. First, a new wave of handcrafted Champagnes from small vineyard estates has just reached American shores, offering quality that rivals that of the best wines from the more famous Champagne houses--often at less than half the price.

Second, the grandes marques themselves are not to be outdone and have released a great collection of highly rated vintage Champagnes from a trio of great years: 1988, 1989 and 1990. Krug and Veuve Clicquot, to name two, turned in virtuoso performances with their highest-priced cuvées. All things considered, the current supply of top-quality Champagne is probably unprecedented.

As usual, Champagne doesn't come cheaply, but when the quality in the bottle is as high as it is in the spicy elegance of the Krug Brut 1989 ($125) or the full-bodied sophistication of the Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame 1989 ($100), each of which scored 94 points on the Wine Spectator 100-point scale, you are getting what you pay for. These and literally dozens of other exciting bottlings turned up in Wine Spectator's biggest tasting report ever on the wines of Champagne.

I blind-tasted 195 Champagnes over the past year, a majority of them in recent weeks, and all the findings are presented here and in the Buying Guide (full tasting notes begin on page 184). An unprecedented 58 Champagnes scored 90 or better, and more than three-quarters of those were vintage dated. If you pick any real Champagne off the shelf from 1988, '89 or '90, you stand a very good chance of experiencing what only Champagne can consistently deliver: a superbly balanced sparkling wine that tastes crisp and refreshing yet supple, while layering on rich flavors that linger on the finish.

The news about non-vintage Champagne is not as universally positive. Very few of them were bad, but many of them tasted merely good. They didn't have the vibrant fruit flavors of the vintage wines, nor the complexity or length. More than 30 rated 84 points or less, and the least expensive of these has a suggested retail price of $24. Despite what the owners and importers of the big brands say, non-vintage Champagne, blended from base wines from different years and from different districts in Champagne, often is not consistent in quality from year to year.

Unless you insist on serving "real" Champagne on principle, you generally will find much better value in non-vintage California sparkling wine (see Jeff Morgan's report, "Sparkling Values," beginning on page 78). On the other hand, with so many outstanding vintage Champagnes starting at $35 or $40 a bottle, it's smart to trade up from the non-vintage wines. It's also worth noting that many wine retailers put heavy discounts on non-vintage Champagne, so bargains can often be found. Three of my favorite non-vintage choices are the lush, seductive Cattier Brut Champagne Antique (91, $30), the mature and assertive Montaudon Brut (91, $30) and the refined Pommery Brut Royal Apanage (90, $27).

Probably the most exciting news for Champagne connoisseurs is that an American wine importer, Terry Thiese of the Kronheim Companies, has made a cause of finding and importing high quality Champagnes from small family-run estates. When I visit Champagne, I am always amazed by the size and diversity of this wine region. Hundreds of wineries there make high-quality wines in small quantities, like their counterparts in Burgundy, yet almost none of these bottlings come to America. Why should the big brands be the only taste of Champagne that most of us can experience?

Thiese, who has long championed small-production German wines, asked himself the same question. So he sought out the small, basically unknown Champagne houses, tasted their wines and selected 10 to introduce to the United States this fall. Eight of the 10 are covered in this report--Henri Billiot, Chartogne-Taillet, Gaston Chiquet, Rene Geoffroy, Pierre Gimonnet & Fils, Larmandier-Bernier, A. Margaine and Vilmart. The majority are quite exciting, both for the quality of their wines and their reasonable prices, but don't expect them to be easy to find soon.

Look especially for two that carry the designation "Special Club," a name bestowed by a group of growers on worthy wines after a taste test. Gaston Chiquet made a powerful but sophisticated Brut Champagne Special Club 1990 (92, $39), and A. Margaine released a plush Brut Blanc de Blancs Special Club 1989 (90, $43). These wines beat out many of the higher-priced Champagnes, including Dom Perignon 1990 (89, $110) and Louis Roederer Cristal 1990 (87, $150), to earn this designation.

Another source of Champagne new to the United States is a cooperative of 1,800 growers called Union Champagne, most of its exports designated as de St.-Gall. It's an impressive lineup: three out of the five wines I tasted broke the 90-point barrier. All three were Blancs de Blancs, made solely from Chardonnay grapes, and the best was an absolutely stunning Cuvée Orpale 1985 (95, $49) made strictly from grand cru vineyards. Union Champagne will be hard to find, because the brand is just getting established here.

The Orpale was not the only Champagne from 1985 that scored 95 points. This increasingly rare vintage, in which a severe spring-freeze drastically reduced the size of the grape crop and boosted the quality of what remained, accounted for three of the top four wines in this report. The Charles Heidsieck Brut Rosé 1985 (95, $55) has been available for a few years, and this year it tasted better than ever.

Two of the other top-scorers were from Krug, the small, family-operated, Remy Martin-owned house known for barrel-fermenting its base wine and setting prices that make the other houses seem frugal in comparison. Krug's Brut Blanc de Blancs Clos du Mesnil 1985 (96, $210), from the tiny, historic, walled-in clos in the Chardonnay village of Mesnil-sur-Oger, really came into its own this year, combining a plush texture with harmonious, mature flavors in truly classic style. Krug's Brut Rosé NV (95, $150) was nearly as impressive in its own right, subtle in flavor and seamless in texture.

Veuve Clicquot also deserves special mention for the quality of its two recently released Grande Dame cuvées, the top wines of its line, scoring 94 points apiece. The Brut Grande Dame 1989 ($100) totally redeemed the relatively poor showing last year of the 1988. The first U.S. release of a Grande Dame Rosé, the 1988 ($195), is delicate, dry and cherry-scented--a class act if you care to spend that much.

The great showing by many of the older Champagnes in this report is no accident. Champagne does improve in the bottle, especially in the 55° natural cellars in Champagne, dug out of the pure chalk subsoil. But Champagne can also improve in your cellar at home, if you have a cool one. This season is an opportune time to buy a case or two of a vintage-dated Champagne that you like and study how it changes and improves with maturity.

The 1990s are prime candidates for the cellar. Many are quite young: They taste rather straightforward, powerfully fruity but without much nuance yet. Even Moët's Dom Perignon 1990 still seems to be in an awkward phase and should improve with time.

The other advantage of stocking up now is that you will be sure to have some good bubbly on hand when the millennium celebrations begin. Rumors about the scarcity of Champagne are unfounded. Abundant supplies of non-vintage Champagne, at least, will be available. But vintage Champagne is made in such small quantities to start with--perhaps only 10 percent of a typical house's output is vintage--and the current vintages on sale, specifically 1985, 1988, 1989 and 1990, are so good, that an investment in one of these would be a wise move even if New Year's Eve 1999 weren't just around the corner.

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Champagne the region came before Champagne the sparkling wine. And although winemakers in certain other parts of the world (particularly California) persist in using the term champagne for their own sparkling wines, French Champagne from the Marne Valley is the original.

Bubbles are not the only thing that sets the wines of Champagne apart. Over the centuries, this northerly wine region has adopted its own set of rules that defy the cold winters and short growing seasons. Growers in Champagne rarely harvest grapes that are ripe enough to make normal table wines without a heavy addition of sugar. So the vineyard owners and wine merchants of the past made a virtue out of necessity. They produced a still wine that was low in alcohol and high in acidity, then put it through a second fermentation to raise the alcohol level and create the effervescence. This second fermentation takes place in the individual bottles, and leaves behind used-up yeast cells (called the lees) that give the wine extra character--as it ages for at least a year and a half and often up to three years or more on these lees.

Champagne further tries to outsmart nature by using different grape varieties. The three main ones are the red-wine grapes Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier (which are pressed right after harvest to produce a nearly clear juice) and the white-wine grape Chardonnay. The weather in some years and in some locations favors one over the other two. Most Champagnes are blended from at least two of these varieties before the secondary fermentation. Blanc de Blancs are made from Chardonnay only.

Winemakers get further flexibility from their widely scattered vineyards, and from the practice of blending the crops from two or more years together to make the traditional non-vintage Champagne.

Champagne may be known as the drink of celebration, and it does go very well with appetizers, or is quite enjoyable as an apéritif. But it is also fine to drink at the table. Its crisp acidity makes a good match with many first courses that feature fish or shellfish, and it's good with lighter meat and poultry, too.

 

Champagne Uncorked

How good are the big-selling bruts, and why is French Champagne so special?

By Jim Gordon

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As the economy continues to boom and the millennium fast approaches, wine lovers may drink more Champagne in the next 19 months than they usually do in several years. In fact, they're already buying these bottles like they're going out of style. The Champagne industry reports a 14.5 percent increase in shipments to the United States in 1997, and 46 percent of this total is brut non-vintage Champagne.

Americans love to drink the basic bruts of Moët, Veuve Clicquot, Mumm and several other popular brands. But what exactly are you drinking when you pop the cork from a bottle of this high-priced but non-vintage category of wine? Made from a blend of different grapes from different vineyards and different years, brut non-vintage may be the world's most complicated wine.

We decided to examine the 10 biggest-selling French Champagne brands in the United States and spotlight their non-vintage bruts, the mainstay of each Champagne firm. What should you expect them to taste like? How good are they? And, ultimately, why must they be so different in concept from the other great wines of the world?

For this report, I visited each of the top 10 Champagne houses and interviewed the executives and cellar masters in charge. I have been blind-tasting their wines for many years, but I tried fresh samples of all their brut non-vintage wines blind in New York and again in Champagne. On the pages that follow are brief company profiles and my latest notes and scores to help you decide which style of Champagne suits your taste buds.

Beyond the buying advice, however, we also present an analytical piece that examines why Champagne is unique in the world. It brings festivity, romance, a sense of celebration to any occasion when it's uncorked. And yet it's a serious wine, too, one that's even more enjoyable when you understand where it comes from.

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The Magic Formula

The 250-year-old recipe breaks all the rules--but should it?

You have to admire the moxie of the winemakers in Champagne. If any other wine region of the world tried to sell a product that starts at nearly $30 a bottle, there would be a few rules. For one, they'd have to put the vintage on the label. For another, they'd have to add the district, village or specific vineyard name. They might also have to tell you what grape varieties the wine is made from.

But not in the Champagne region of France. The most popular Champagnes--the non-vintage bruts--follow none of these rules.

From the wine lover's point of view, this goes against the grain of connoisseurship. Wine connoisseurs love to know all the details and follow a vineyard or winery through its ups and downs. They want to identify a wine with a place and a time. But non-vintage Champagne gives very little evidence of its origins. It's about as far removed from the concept of terroir, treasured in every other wine region of France, as a wine can get.

You could say Champagne is a victim of its own success. The region has been making sparkling wine using a unique formula for nearly 300 years, and promoting it as the beverage of celebration for at least 200. Some people buy Champagne purely for the cachet. Others really like the crisp, elegant style and complex flavor of Champagne, which has not been exactly duplicated elsewhere, despite fierce competition from California, Spain, Italy and other parts of France.

At its best, non-vintage brut combines subtlety and power. By law it is dry in style, containing a maximum of 1.5 percent sugar. It has a delicate flavor profile with an appetizingly crisp texture created by firm acidity that makes the flavors seem to accelerate and expand in the mouth, providing a lingering finish after you've swallowed. The secondary fermentation--which takes place in the bottle, producing the bubbles--and the long period of aging that follows make all bottle-fermented sparkling wines different. But these steps seem to intensify the other factors unique to the Champagne region, for a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. For all its imitators, real Champagne is still worth its high price if you choose your brut wisely.

It's a time of reexamination in the Champagne region, where despite booming sales many companies are not profitable. There, in the damp caves dug out of pure chalk and in the 200-year-old châteaus used as offices, some people are flirting with heresy. They want to change Champagne's carefully shaped image from that of a beverage of celebration to that of a fine wine.

Can the Champenois have it both ways? They want people to consider Champagne not just as something bubbly to drink out of starlets' slippers, but as a wine for meals, a wine to age--something serious, and thus worth an even higher price tag. More than one executive in Reims and Epernay told me that the goals for the immediate future are not in making more Champagne but in raising the price per bottle. Yet those in the Champagne establishment are moving very slowly to treat Champagne more like other wines. They could take steps to produce more vintage-dated Champagne, create more vineyard-designated Champagne (only a handful exist today) and give consumers more information on their labels.

Is Champagne a wine?

The idea is so elementary that at first it seems ridiculous. Of course, Champagne is a wine. It's made from wine grapes that have been fermented and aged. But the whole structure and culture of the Champagne business is bound to the idea that the wine of Champagne is not just a wine. Three centuries ago, pioneers in Champagne -- including the monk Dom Pérignon--perfected a winemaking method that turned this northerly region with a short growing season and thin, tart table wines into a source of appetizing and profitable sparkling wines.

The magic formula involved more than just the bubbles -- it was the blend. A blend of grape varieties, a blend of vineyards, a blend of vintages. By manipulating these variables and putting the resulting wine through a second fermentation, the winemakers of Champagne not only made a great-tasting wine, but they also cheated nature. If the Pinot Noir grapes failed to ripen, they could rely on the Pinot Meunier. If the vineyards of the Montagne de Reims were devastated by frost, they could use grapes from the Vallée de la Marne. If the base wine from 1698 was not so great because of a rainy September, they could blend in 20 percent of 1697 and 10 percent of the great 1695 vintage.

One house that's trying to put the wine back into Champagne is Charles Heidsieck. Later this year it plans to take a small step that wine lovers have been wanting for many years: dating its non-vintage brut with the year it began its second fermentation, which is the year after the harvest. At the very least, putting this date on the label will help consumers know how fresh the bottles are, and they may help people understand the quality of vintage years.

To Patrick Charpentier, general director of Champagne P. & C. Heidsieck, it's a positive marketing move. "Quality has not been part of the story about Champagne," says Charpentier, referring to the showbiz glitz and associations with artists, prime ministers and royalty that have traditionally been exploited to promote Champagne. "We want to emphasize quality and talk about it. Our objective is to give added value--something you can check, something that is real."

While Charles Heidsieck, owned by the giant spirits firm Rémy Cointreau, is on the opposite end of the corporate spectrum from family-owned Champagne Bollinger, both houses may be going in the same direction. In 1992, when Champagne was reeling from declining sales and sharp criticism of its wine quality in the English and French press, Bollinger took the bull by the horns and published a "Charter of Ethics and Quality." Bollinger declared that it made all its Champagne itself, while many other houses bought already-bottled wine and put their labels on it. Bollinger stated that it only used the first pressing of each batch of grapes, widely considered to provide the best juice, and not the juice from the next two pressings. Among many other points, Bollinger said it aged even its least expensive Champagne for three years "on the yeast" and at least another three months before releasing it.

Bollinger's initiative seemed to break the wall of secrecy that surrounded much of Champagne. Bollinger even put details of its winemaking practice on its labels. Since then, the executives and cellar masters at other houses have been more willing to talk about how Champagne is made. Several have also embraced Bollinger's rules on aging, on using the first pressing only and on refusing to buy ready-made Champagne. The trade organization representing growers and Champagne houses has also come out for tougher quality standards and more public education.

What's in a brut?

Differences in Champagne style are often subtle, but a knowledgeable wine lover can detect them. Yet there are so many variables in Champagne that it's difficult to sort out why a Champagne has a certain style. For example, you might expect those with a preponderance of Pinot Noir in the blend to be heartier and bolder in flavor, because Pinot Noir is a red wine grape. That holds true for the serious Bollinger, which is made from 60 percent Pinot Noir, but not for the extremely friendly, crisp Piper-Heidsieck, which contains 50 percent Pinot Noir.

The effects of aging, and of aged reserve wines that are added to the blend, often leave a stronger stamp on a Champagne than the grape varieties. The desirable aroma often cited as "doughy," "yeasty" or "toasty," because it smells like toasted bread, comes from the interaction of the wine with the yeast as it undergoes its second fermentation, in the bottle, and then rests with the yeast lees for two to three years. Champagnes with a higher percentage of Chardonnay seem to develop more of that sophisticated, prized, sometimes earthy "toast" character.

Bollinger and Louis Roederer are good examples of houses where the reserve wines add a distinctive character. Reserves are blended into the Champagne base wine a few months after the harvest and before the base wine goes into bottles for the second fermentation. This is a turning point in the wine's creation, as the cellar master and his staff taste dozens or even hundreds of sharp young still wines to decide how to assemble the blend. Reserves constitute from 10 percent to 40 percent of the base wine; 20 percent is average.

Bollinger uses reserve wines (in small quantities) as old as 15 years, which have been aging in magnums, gaining a mature character as do still wines. These help give Bollinger an attractive smoky or nutty nuance. Roederer's cellar master, Michel Pansu, underlines the importance of using oak-aged reserve wines. The subtle interaction between the oak and the wine usually gives a more mellow, less lively character. "That's what makes the Brut Premier taste more like a wine and less like a sparkling wine," Pansu says.

The Champenois say the real purpose of the reserve wine is not to make the non-vintage brut better, but to keep a brut's flavor profile the same from year to year. Reserve wines from sunnier, riper vintages can help smooth out an otherwise lean base wine from the most recent harvest, for example. But non-vintage bruts may not be immune to the effects of greater or lesser years. Most of these on sale today are based on the 1993 and 1994 vintages. These are good--if not great--years, and they may account for an apparent tick upward in my recent scoring of the bruts compared to the past couple of years, when the wines were based on the weaker 1991 and 1992 vintages. If true, this theory means we will be in for even better Champagne in another year or so, when bruts based on the fine 1995 and 1996 vintages arrive just in time for the millennium.

Jean-Claude Rouzaud, owner of Roederer, says some consumers can taste the difference when the Brut Premier based on one year is replaced in wine shops by the one based on the following year. But he says the difference comes from the fact that the first shipments of a newer bottling have spent several months' less time aging on the yeast than have the last shipments of the previous bottling. Champagne houses typically don't release all of a bottling at once, as do still wine producers. They prepare their wines for shipment by disgorging them in waves. Disgorging is the process of expelling the yeast lees, topping up the bottle with a bit of sweetened wine called the dosage and applying the cork, foil and label. The bottles should spend three to six months more in the cellars after disgorging before being shipped, the cellar masters say.

Will the magic disappear?

It all adds up to a long and complicated trip from the grape grower to the person who pops the cork. The top-selling brut non-vintage Champagnes on the market now are two to three years older than the current releases of most table wines. This long aging process amplifies the other unusual techniques that make Champagne a unique wine.

There's no denying the enjoyment, the festivity or the romance captured in a bottle of brut. Many Champagne makers seem to think that this magic will disappear if people look too closely at how the magic is performed. The wine world, however, is getting increasingly competitive. Partly because of the Champagne houses' own efforts in other countries, Champagne no longer has an exclusive hold on producing high-quality sparkling wine.

Today's wine lovers don't have to buy Champagne. They are better educated about wine than ever before, and they know that there are alternatives. They buy their bubbly based on taste, and they want to understand how it came to taste that way. And they continue to enjoy Champagne because it embodies such a masterful blend of poetry and production techniques. Taking more of the mystery out of Champagne would only add to its appreciation, not take away its mystique.

Comparing the Top-Selling Bruts

Wine / Score / Price

Charles Heidsieck Brut Réserve NV / 91 / $34
G.H. Mumm Brut Cordon Rouge NV / 90 / $25
Bollinger Brut Special Cuvée NV / 89 / $30
Taittinger Brut La Française NV / 89 / $38
Veuve Clicquot Brut NV / 88 / $45
Perrier-Jouët Grand Brut NV / 87 / $28
Louis Roederer Brut Premier NV / 87 / $42
Piper-Heidsieck Brut NV / 86 / $28
Pol Roger Brut NV / 85 / $35
Laurent-Perrier Brut L.P. NV / 84 / $25
Moët & Chandon Brut Impérial NV / 84 / $40

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Piper-Heidsieck & Charles Heidsieck

The life of the party and the best of the top-selling bruts

Keeping track of the Heidsiecks of Champagne has been like following the Kennedy clan in politics. They both started from nuclear families, but have splintered, argued and occasionally reunited when it served their interests.

Since 1989, Piper-Heidsieck and Charles Heidsieck have been firmly joined together under the ownership of Rémy Cointreau. Employees of the company refer to these two houses by their first names, and to show how close Piper and Charles are today, the company is now known as Champagne P. & C. Heidsieck (pronounced HIDE-sick).

Although Piper and Charles share the same owner; the same cellar master, Daniel Thibault; and the same dazzling new $10 million winery outside Reims, they maintain studiously different styles of wine. For Champagne drinkers accustomed to Moët and Veuve Clicquot, Piper and Charles offer refreshing differences.

Think of Piper as the life of the party and Charles as the suave dinner guest. Piper-Heidsieck Brut NV(rated 86 points) is deliberately made to be lively and exuberant--and it is. Of all the Champagne houses in this report, only Piper admits to aging its brut for as little as two years on the yeast before disgorging (the minimum by law is one year). Most houses take pride in a longer period of maturity, but enologist Cecile Rivault says, "We are looking for freshness and youth in Piper."

The core taste of Piper comes from its heavy reliance on Pinot Noir, usually 50 percent, plus 30 percent Pinot Meunier and 20 percent Chardonnay. But Piper's brut tastes less sober and staid than other Pinot-based Champagnes, possibly because a high percentage of its grapes comes from the southernmost part of Champagne, the Aube district. No one describes the Aube vineyards as being the best, but they work well in Piper's blend.

In contrast, Charles Heidsieck Brut Réserve NV (91, $34) is a fully developed, luscious and flavorful style of Champagne that you want to linger over. In my view, it's the best non-vintage brut of the top 10 brands. It's more of a wine than a refreshment, showing all the complexity and creamy texture of a nicely mature table wine, but with the fine-beaded effervescence and firm acidity for which Champagne is famous. Roughly equal parts of Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay go into the Brut Réserve, but an unusually large proportion of reserve wine from older years is used--as much as 40 percent.

Rivault says that if Piper's style is like an inverted pyramid, where the first impression is an accessible breadth of flavor, then Charles' style is like a regular pyramid, with tantalizing peaks of flavor at the first sip, but great depth to explore as you continue to taste and enjoy it.

It's a corporate environment at P. & C. Heidsieck, but the company is pushing fresh ideas as well as high-quality Champagnes. For one thing, Charles Heidsieck is introducing a revolutionary new way to label its non-vintage wines. Beginning this fall in the United States, you will see bottles of Brut Réserve with dates on them. A sticker on the neck will say "Mis en Cave" followed by a year. This means the wine was "put in the cellar" in a certain year, and essentially tells you that the "vintage" of this non-vintage product is the year before the year printed. Thus, if a bottle says "Mis en Cave 1994," it means that the majority of the wine in the blend came from the 1993 harvest. Champagnes go into bottles for their secondary fermentation during the winter following a harvest.

While most wine regions would yawn at such a concept, it's truly unusual in Champagne, where the concept of non-vintage blends and maintaining consistent house styles from year to year has taken precedence over vintage quality for a very long time.

At the very least, consumers of Charles Heidsieck will know how old a bottle is when they purchase it. But Patrick Charpentier, general director of the firm, says the idea goes beyond that. Three-bottle sets will also be sold, featuring Brut Réserves from three consecutive years. Even older, fully mature and dated bottles will be available from time to time. A 1986 (based on the great 1985 vintage) that I tasted in Reims was gorgeous: complex, subtle, intricate and layered, yet still quite fresh.

PIPER-HEIDSIECK
Founded 1785
Owner Rémy Cointreau
Vineyards owned 190 acres (total)
Annual production 584,000 cases
Shipped to U.S. in 1997 50,000 cases
86 Brut Champagne NV $28 Fresh and lively in texture, exuberant and slightly spicy in flavor. It's light but well balanced. Better than previously reviewed.
93 Brut Champagne Rare 1988 $66
89 Brut Rosé Champagne NV $48
89 Extra Dry Champagne NV $28

CHARLES HEIDSIECK
Founded 1851
Owner Rémy Cointreau
Vineyards owned 190 acres (total)
Annual production 160,000 cases
Shipped to U.S. in 1997 5,000 cases
91 Brut Champagne Réserve NV $34 Luxurious and inviting in style, this has toasty, vanillin aromas, compelling and complex fruit flavors, a creamy, smooth texture and a lingering finish. Much better than when tasted for the Oct. 31, 1997, issue.
95 Brut Rosé Champagne 1985 $55
94 Brut Blanc de Blancs Champagne Blanc des Millénaires 1985 $70
88 Brut Champagne 1990 $48

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G.H. Mumm

The details all add up for Cordon Rouge

Who says you can't havequality and quantity at the same time? In Champagne, where the craft of blending a cuvée from diverse batches of base wine is revered, it's practically a commandment that the two do indeed go together. And G.H. Mumm proves the point as well as any Champagne house.

Mumm is the No. 4 Champagne house in exports to the United States. Its Cordon Rouge ("red ribbon") non-vintage, first produced in 1875, is the company's standard-bearer--accounting for 85 percent of Mumm's production--and it is also one of the best non-vintage Champagnes from the big firms. In two out of the last three years I have rated it 90 points in blind tastings, and the "off" year still earned a very good 86 score.

While Mumm has long provided good quality, its performance in recent years seems special. New cellar master Dominique Demarville is refining innovations begun in the early 1990s. There's no one secret to Mumm's success, says Jean-Marie Barillere, vice president of operations, but Mumm uses the latest technology and applies its own research to continually refine its approach.

Cordon Rouge is made from a relatively high percentage of Pinot Noir--40 percent--plus 20 percent Chardonnay, 20 percent Pinot Meunier and 20 percent reserve wines from previous years. That blend is not so different from Moët's and several of the other big Champagne firms' formulas, but Mumm seems to get more richness of flavor and creaminess of texture from the mix.

Barillere says Cordon Rouge has to be more than just bubbles. "It's the wine qualities we are looking for," he says, especially the power and length of flavor that come from firm acidity in the base wine and a high percentage of Pinot Noir.

Mumm and Perrier-Jouët are both owned by the New York-based Seagram Château & Estate Wines Co., but they maintain separate winemaking staffs and facilities. They do share the same vineyard team and a research group that investigates such topics as new vine-training methods and the improvement of yeast strains for the second fermentation. These "techie" details don't make as romantic a story as those of more traditional houses that use barrel fermentation or hand-riddling, but each bottle of Cordon Rouge tells such a good story by itself that it doesn't matter.

G.H. MUMM
Founded 1827
Owner Seagram Château & Estate Wines Co.
Vineyards owned 525 acres
Annual production 625,000 cases
Shipped to U.S. in 1997 100,000 cases
90 Brut Champagne Cordon Rouge NV $25 A most distinctive Champagne, with an extra dimension that makes it stand out from the pack. It offers pungent earthy, toasty aromas that melt on the palate into opulent, creamy flavors that linger with richness on the finish.
85 Extra Dry Champagne Carte Classique NV $25
84 Brut Blanc de Blancs Champagne Mumm de Cramant NV $40

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Bollinger

A most distinctive, mature, Pinot Noir style of Champagne

Bollinger occupies a special place in the hearts of its devotees, because its Champagnes are unique in style and its methods are extremely traditional. Offer a glass of Moët non-vintage and a glass of Bollinger Special Cuvée NV to a novice wine drinker and he or she will easily note the difference.

That's not to say that everyone will prefer the Bollinger. Its toasty, sometimes smoky aromas and nutty, honeylike flavors are too aggressive for some, but there's no denying the distinctiveness of this wine. With a whopping 60 percent Pinot Noir in the blend and the use of well-aged reserve wines, Bollinger Special Cuvée (rated 89) has a serious character that puts it at the far end of the style spectrum.

The family-owned company has been outspokenly adamant about preserving traditional elements of the Champagne-making process. Much of the base wine for its vintage bottlings, for instance, is still barrel-fermented, a very unusual practice in the region today. Bottles of vintage and reserve wines are still topped with corks instead of modern metal caps as they undergo more than four years of aging on the yeast. A great-grandson of cofounder Jacques Bollinger, Ghislaine de Montgolfier, is president of the company.

Special Cuvée is fermented in stainless steel tanks, but it does benefit from the addition of reserve wines that have been aging in magnums resting "on the cork" in Bollinger's cellars near Epernay for up to 15 years. Another factor in the quality equation is that Bollinger relies on 360 acres of its own vineyards--70 percent of its needs--for its annual output of 120,000 cases of Champagne.

Bollinger made its boldest statement on behalf of tradition in 1992, when it published a "Charter of Ethics and Quality," laying out its winemaking standards and practices and challenging other Champagne houses to meet the same standards. This charter helped renew interest in quality winemaking in Champagne. Now, cellar masters at several other houses say they have adopted many of these standards.

No discussion of Bollinger would be complete without mention of its consistently outstanding vintage Champagnes (93 points for both the 1988 and 1989) and the R.D. ("recently disgorged") releases. These wines are older vintages that have been aged a minimum of eight years before release, and they exhibit a fascinating marriage of mature flavors and fresh texture. The current R.D. offering is 1985 (rated 92).

BOLLINGER
Founded 1829
Owner Descendants of Jacques Bollinger
Vineyards owned 360 acres
Annual production 120,000 cases
Shipped to U.S. in 1997 13,000 cases
89 Brut Champagne Special Cuvée NV $30 A full-flavored, robust and mature style of Champagne that blends nutty, toasty aromas with rich honey and nut flavors. Shows fine depth, a great texture and lingering finish.
93 Brut Champagne Grande Année 1989 $70
92 Brut Rosé Champagne 1988 $60
92 Extra Brut Champagne R.D. 1985 $135

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Taittinger

A relative newcomer emphasizes the elegance of Chardonnay

Taittinger is a youngster among the gray-haired eminences of Champagne. The brand is "only" 60 years old, but it has established a deserved reputation for Champagnes of consistency and style.

That style is tied to the company's emphasis on Chardonnay. From the Taittinger Brut non-vintage, known as La Française, to the prestige cuvée, Comtes de Champagne, a high percentage of Chardonnay helps give Taittinger wines a distinct personality--assertively toasty, vanillin aromas followed by crisp, citruslike flavors and an elegant texture.

The brut non-vintage, made of 45 percent Chardonnay, has been extremely consistent in my blind tastings since 1994, scoring 88, 88, 86, 88 and 89. Taittinger keeps its brut in the caves for three to four years, and this extended aging tends to bring that toasty, spicy character out of the Chardonnay. The Comtes de Champagne takes the Chardonnay idea even further--it is a Blanc de Blancs, made solely from Chardonnay.

Although Taittinger is not one of the giants in the Champagne region, it is the most prominent family-owned Champagne in the United States, trailing just behind the brands of LVMH and Seagram in sales volume.

Claude Taittinger's father founded the firm. Claude began working for Taittinger after World War II and has directed the Champagne house since 1960. This puts him in the same league as Bernard de Nonancourt of Laurent-Perrier when it comes to longevity on the job, each having 50-plus years of experience.

The Taittinger family owns a holding company called the Taittinger Group, whose diversified interests also include Concorde Hotels--the most famous of which is the Crillon in Paris--as well as the Société du Louvre and a Loire Valley sparkling wine company called Bouvet-Labuday. Taittinger also operates the Napa Valley winery Domaine Carneros, which makes sparkling and still wines.

Despite the Taittinger brand's relative youth, it has the cachet of aristocracy. Part of it stems from the high quality of the wines, but it also comes from its grand properties in Champagne, including historic buildings, Roman-era caves and 600 acres of vines. A picture-postcard vineyard estate near Epernay called Château de la Marquetterie was acquired by Pierre Taittinger in 1932, a year after he bought the Champagne firm of Forest-Forneau.

TAITTINGER
Founded 1931
Owner Taittinger family
Vineyards owned 600 acres
Annual production 350,000 cases
Shipped to U.S. in 1997 58,800 cases
89 Brut Champagne La Française NV $38 A complete Champagne that pulls it all together: the vivid fruit flavors, the plush texture, the spicy-toasty nuances and the long finish. Even better than when last tasted.
89 Brut Blanc de Blancs Champagne Comtes de Champagne 1989 $113
89 Brut Rosé Champagne Comtes de Champagne 1993 $152
87 Brut Champagne Millésime 1991 $52
87 Brut Rosé Champagne Cuvée Prestige NV $48

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Veuve Clicquot

The "yellow label" is second only to Moët in popularity

The business of selling Champagne is almost as entrenched as the soft-drink business. The big brands, established long ago, seem to glide along on the strength of their marketing inertia. So when Veuve Clicquot became the No. 2 best-selling Champagne in the United States in 1995, it was big news in the wine trade--as if Royal Crown Cola suddenly beat Pepsi to stand alongside Coke.

Now Veuve Clicquot (pronounced vuhv klee-KOH) is second only to its sister Champagne house, Moët & Chandon, in popularity among Americans. The two houses together easily sell more bottles in the United States than all their competitors combined.

In the late 1980s, Veuve Clicquot began to establish a cult following here based on the fine quality of its brut non-vintage, also known as the "yellow label" (even though the label is orange). Then a savvy but subtle marketing campaign took over, and a few short years later, people from Pensacola to Portland could pronounce the name and enjoy the wine.

The quality of the yellow label brut slumped slightly in recent years, but consumers haven't seemed to mind. It appears, however, that the quality level is on the rise again. I rated this brut 85 points in the last published review (Nov. 15, 1997), but in a recent blind sample it seemed noticeably better, and now gets an 88 score--exceptionally good for a wine shipped here in quantities of about 170,000 cases. The current release is more complex and creamy, more long-lasting on the finish than were its last four incarnations.

Pinot Noir makes up between 50 and 55 percent of the brut, Chardonnay 30 percent and Pinot Meunier the remainder. Cellar master Jacques Peters says that Pinot Noir sets the style of Veuve Clicquot all the way from the yellow label to the La Grand Dame prestige cuvée. One unusual aspect of Veuve Clicquot's brut is that Peters uses a high percentage of reserve wines to round out the blend, usually about a third. He says that several factors may account for the wine's improvement, including better contracts with the independent grape growers who supply about 75 percent of his needs, newer technology in the winery and a good run of vintages that allowed him to set aside better reserves.

The word veuve in Veuve Clicquot, meaning widow, refers to Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, the woman who took over her husband's small wine business after his death in 1805.

VEUVE CLICQUOT
Founded 1772
Owner LVMH Moët-Hennessy Louis Vuitton
Vineyards owned 700 acres
Annual production 700,000-900,000 cases
Shipped to U.S. in 1997 170,000 cases
88 Brut Champagne NV $45 Beautifully refreshing and fruity in character, creamy in texture and with a lingering, toasty finish. Improved since our last tasting.
94 Brut Champagne La Grande Dame 1989 $100
94 Brut Rosé Champagne La Grande Dame 1988 $195
89 Brut Rosé Champagne Réserve 1988 $60
84 Brut Champagne Réserve 1989 $50
84 Demi-Sec Champagne NV $45

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Perrier-Jouët

Why buy the "flower bottle" when the Grand Brut non-vintage is so good?

Like most of the largest Champagne houses, Perrier-Jouët owns a minority of the vineyards from which it receives grapes. The 161 acres that it does own provide only about 25 percent of the firm's needs, but these holdings nevertheless establish Perrier-Jouët's wine style.

Most of what it owns is planted to Chardonnay, including a large holding of 90 acres in the coveted village of Cramant. Perrier-Jouët (pronounced PEHR-ee-ay zhew-EHT) puts 50 percent Chardonnay in its vintage-dated prestige cuvée, the Fleur de Champagne. The Grand Brut non-vintage has just 20 percent Chardonnay, but company president Thierry Budin says, "Chardonnay gives us the elegance, the lightness, the finesse that we want. This has been our style forever."

The Grand Brut (rated 87) is not a lightweight, however, because it can smell toasty and rich, but the Chardonnay shows itself through a slightly buttery flavor that blends nicely with a clean, bright fruit character. The Cuvée Belle Epoque takes the Chardonnay factor further, adding a creamy texture and pastrylike flavors that make it easy to appreciate in the 1989 vintage (also rated 87). This cuvée is better known as the "flower bottle" because of its ara-besque design created for Perrier-Jouët in 1902 by artist Emile Galle.

Perrier-Jouët has been owned by the Seagram Château & Estate Wines Co. since 1959. This branch of Seagram's international drinks business also owns the Champagne house of G.H. Mumm. The Perrier-Jouët brand has grown from a mere 500 cases in the United States in 1975 to 103,000 cases today, but it still operates like a family winery in many ways. In fact, Budin is the sixth generation of his family to work at Perrier-Jouët's Epernay cellars.

Budin says that the Fleur de Champagne is especially popular in the United States, which is Perrier-Jouët's most important market, but that the firm's pride is tied up in the non-vintage brut. "Our philosophy is that if we are to be recognized as a grande marque **great brand**, it must be on the quality of the Grand Brut."

In my estimation, the Grand Brut is similar in quality to the much more expensive flower bottle. So if price is a consideration and your interest lies more in taste than in packaging, the Grand Brut makes a better purchase.

PERRIER-JOUET
Founded 1811
Owner Seagram Château & Estate Wines Co.
Vineyards owned 161 acres
Annual production 230,000 cases
Shipped to U.S. in 1997 103,000 cases
87 Brut Champagne Grand Brut NV $28 Rich in texture and full-flavored, this packs more punch than the usual Champagne. Combines bright fruit flavors with an attractive buttery character that lingers on the finish.
88 Brut Rosé Champagne Fleur de Champagne Belle Epoque 1988 $110
87 Brut Champagne Fleur de Champagne Belle Epoque 1989 $100
86 Brut Champagne Grand Brut 1989 $35

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Louis Roederer

A winning formula based on vineyard ownership and a classic style

Jean-Claude Rouzaud, ownerof Champagne Louis Roederer, speaks with conviction about the quality of his Brut Premier non-vintage. "We are one of the companies, if not the company, where the consistency of the Brut Premier is certain."

It's difficult to argue with him when my ratings of the Brut Premier over the past four years have tracked about as flat as Kansas: 88, 89, 87, 87, 87. Roederer makes a classic style of Champagne, always solid but not showy in fruit flavor, nuanced with cinnamon and vanilla, and wrapped in a distinctly smooth texture with a lingering finish. Given samples of two different years' blends of Brut Premier to taste blind, the only difference I could detect was a slightly more toasty aroma in the sample that turned out to be a year older.

The consistency is due in large part to Rouzaud's ownership of 470 acres of vineyard, 95 percent of what is needed for his production. A blend that averages two-thirds Pinot Noir gives Roederer a tangy, often appley character. The use of mature reserve wines that have been aged in large, ornately carved oak casks for several years helps to add complexity and depth, he says.

"The goal is to achieve this paradox between the freshness of the fruit flavors and the roundness and maturity," Rouzaud says. "The Brut Premier is an old young man or a young old man."

Krug and Bollinger are the two other well-known Champagne houses that still use wood casks, but in different ways. Roederer cellar master Michel Pansu characterizes Krug's style as more powerful, Bollinger's as more mature, but Roederer's as having more finesse and more wine character.

Besides the Brut Premier, Roederer's vintage-dated prestige cuvée, Cristal, accounts for 17.5 percent of Roederer's annual 41,000-case sales here--and that's at $150 per bottle. I gave the 1990 Cristal 87 points last fall, but tasted again this spring after six more months of aging, it seemed measurably better.

Other executives in Champagne admire family-owned Roederer for its business success as well as its wines. Rouzaud claims that the firm has been the most profitable company in Champagne for the last 20 years and has no debt. On top of that, he says all of Roederer's wines are presold to the wine trade, yet he doesn't want to increase his production.

So how has the company been able to grow? It developed a highly regarded sparkling wine property in California's Anderson Valley, Roederer Estate, and bought the firms of Deutz in Champagne and Delas in the Rhône Valley, along with two estates in Bordeaux and one in Portugal.

LOUIS ROEDERER
Founded 1776
Owner Rouzaud family
Vineyards owned 470 acres
Annual production 225,000 cases
Shipped to U.S. in 1997 41,000 cases
87 Brut Champagne Brut Premier NV $42 A crisp and appetizing Champagne that emphasizes lemon and apple flavors with accents of vanilla and cinnamon. Elegant in its completeness and smooth texture.
91 Brut Blanc de Blancs Champagne 1990 $54
87 Brut Champagne Cristal 1990 $150
87 Brut Rosé Champagne Cristal 1988 $215

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Pol Roger

The past lives on at Churchill's favorite Champagne house

Tradition pervades the atmos-phere at Pol Roger's cellars and mansion in Epernay. The family that founded the firm in 1849 still owns and runs it. Skilled cellarmen in the deep caves carved out of chalk still riddle, or turn, all the bottles by hand. Women in the bottling room still laboriously paste the labels on oversized bottles without mechanical help. And the house winemaking style is still influenced by one of Pol Roger's most famous former customers: Winston Churchill.

Churchill began buying Pol Roger as a young man, and by the time of World War II it was a staple of his diet, says Christian Pol-Roger, a member of the fourth generation to run the business. In 1984, Pol Roger created a posthumous tribute to the prime minister with the release of a vintage-dated Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill.

In great years, such as 1985, this Pinot Noir-based Champagne can be one of the boldest and most memorable wines from the whole region. Pol Roger's Brut NV (85 points) is much more subdued in character. Christian Pol-Roger says it has a family resemblance to the Churchill Cuvée, but relies on more Pinot Meunier grapes in the blend, among other differences. "Pinot Meunier is like the Merlot of Champagne," he says, meaning that it softens the Pinot Noir when blended with it, as Merlot softens Cabernet Sauvignon in Bordeaux.

The brut non-vintage reaps additional benefits, he says, from an unusual extra step in the fermentation process employed by cellar master James Coffinet. All the juice is allowed to settle for an extended period at 43š F before fermentation begins.

An average of three years of bottle age before disgorgement makes Pol Roger Brut one of the more mature non-vintage Champagnes available. The currently available brut spent an even longer time on the yeast, based as it is on the 1992 vintage. Sometimes the brut strikes me as assertively toasty and earthy in aroma, but it is rather light in style otherwise, usually marked by apple or lemon flavors and a clean but short finish.

A relatively large proportion of Pol Roger's 110,000-case annual output, 25 percent, is vintage Champagne. Fans of Pol Roger should stand by for the release of the Brut Vintage 1990 and the Churchill Cuvée 1988, both with outstanding potential.

POL ROGER
Founded 1849
Owner Pol-Roger and de Billy families
Vineyards owned 200 acres
Annual production 110,000 cases
Shipped to U.S. in 1997 11,300 cases
85 Brut Champagne NV $35 Starts out with the rich, toasty aroma of well-aged Champagne, followed by floral, appley flavors and a soft texture that lets the flavors turn lean on the finish.
88 Brut Champagne Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill 1986 $100

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Laurent-Perrier

Bernard de Nonancourt's 50-year tenure makes a difference

Laurent-Perrier is an atypical Champagne house because it is both big and family-owned. Bernard de Nonancourt has been in charge since 1948, slowly building the company's production from nearly nothing to 80,000 cases in 1966 and 540,000 cases today. It's now the fifth-largest Champagne brand in the world.

De Nonancourt's longevity is especially helpful in getting the best vineyard contracts, he says, through the many personal contacts he has developed over the years. He quotes an old saying that "a good contract is better than owning a bad vine." Laurent-Perrier relies on contracts with independent vineyards for 90 percent of its grapes.

Laurent-Perrier has also developed a wide range of Champagnes over the years, with everything from a bone-dry Ultra Brut non-vintage (90 points the last time it was rated, Nov. 30, 1995) to a terrific top-of-the-line La Cuvée Grand Siècle. This prestige cuvée is unusual in that it is non-vintage, as well as for its use of fully mature base wines--a concept similar to that used in the making of Krug's Grande Cuvée. Sadly, the Grand Siècle is not sold in the United States now.

Brut L.P. is Laurent-Perrier's non-vintage mainstay. In my tastings over the past four years, it has been erratic but always pleasant, scoring 90 the first two times and 84 the next two. It's consistently fresh, fruity, clean and well balanced, but the recent cuvées have seemed rather light in concentration.

Typically blended from a whopping 200 different base wines, the Brut L.P. is "the most difficult of our Champagnes to produce, and the most important," says cellar master Alain Terrier, who has been on the job for 23 years. Terrier's blend is predominantly Chardonnay (45 percent), Pinot Noir (40 percent) and Pinot Meunier.

While most Champagne houses are located in either the city of Reims or the smaller city of Epernay, Laurent-Perrier's cellars are out in the countryside, in the village of Tours-sur-Marne. Grandly decorated hospitality rooms and immaculate winemaking facilities give the impression that it's a very meticulous operation, right down to the white lab coat worn by Terrier.

LAURENT-PERRIER
Founded 1812
Owner de Nonancourt family
Vineyards owned 250 acres
Annual production 540,000 cases
Shipped to U.S. in 1997 25,000 cases
84 Brut Champagne Brut L.P. NV $25 An all-around good sparkler with fresh fruit flavors, a smooth texture and lively balance.
88 Brut Rosé Champagne Grand Siècle Alexandra 1988 $110
84 Brut Rosé Champagne NV $40

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Moët & Chandon

Ubiquitous Moët goes down easy--and often

When Americans think Champagne, they think Moët more often than any other brand. Something about the easy drinkability of Moët & Chandon's non-vintage Champagnes, or perhaps the fame that Moët has acquired over the decades, prompts consumption of nearly 600,000 cases of Moët a year.

Moët (pronounced mo-EHT) is the biggest of four branches on the Champagne tree owned by luxury goods conglomerate LVMH Moët-Hennessy Louis Vuitton. The group, which also includes Veuve Clicquot, Mercier and Ruinart, accounts for 2.75 million cases a year, or 12 percent of the total output of the Champagne region. To say that Moët dominates U.S. sales of Champagne is an understatement, as it accounts for about 40 percent of the Champagne bottles sold here.

Moët's biggest seller in the United States is White Star, a simple but well-made Champagne in the sweet style. Brut Impérial is Moët's best-selling dry cuvée. While not the most distinctive or flavorful non-vintage Champagne you can buy, it consistently scores "good" to "very good" in my blind tastings because of an attractive, light fruit character balanced out by fresh acidity and an agreeable texture.

Richard Geoffroy, cellar master for Dom Pérignon, Moët & Chandon's prestige cuvée, says the Brut Impérial gets its flavor characteristics mostly from the black grapes Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, though Chardonnay typically makes up 20 percent of the blend. "The Moët style is rich and generous without being opulent or showy," he says. "And I always stress the importance of the mouthfeel, a nice rounded forwardness that comes from the combination of Pinot Meunier with Chardonnay."

Moët makes a full range of Champagnes, 12 cuvées in all. At the top of this pyramid is Dom Pérignon, which has an exclusive image but plenty of bottles to go around. The company won't say, but Champagne insiders estimate the production is about 200,000 cases.

The current Dom Pérignon is the 1990 (rated 89 points), and Geoffroy is proud that his bosses let him skip the 1989 vintage. He thought it was not up to snuff, disagreeing with many other cellar masters who bottled their 1989 prestige cuvées. Moët's new president, Jean-Marie Laborde, acknowledges that the company wants to stay on top in terms of quantity, but says that goal cannot be achieved if Moët doesn't take the advice of its winemakers and keep the quality level high. "I am running the company to make money," he says, "but in the long run, to make money I have to listen to these people."

MOET & CHANDON
Founded 1743
Owner LVMH Moët-Hennessy Louis Vuitton
Vineyards owned 1,910 acres
Annual production 2,000,000 cases
Shipped to U.S. in 1997 555,000 cases
84 Brut Champagne Impérial NV $40 Straightforward style of Champagne with crisp, appley flavors, fine balance and toasty, buttery undertones. Better than previously reviewed.
91 Brut Rosé Champagne Cuvée Dom Pérignon 1986 $190
89 Brut Champagne Cuvée Dom Pérignon 1990 $110
89 Brut Rosé Champagne Impérial NV $40
88 Brut Rosé Champagne Impérial 1992 $55
85 Brut Champagne Impérial 1992 $48
84 Demi-Sec Champagne Nectar Impérial NV $38