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Styles & Flavours

It only seems right that, having written so many words on the Champagne region, the houses and growers, the méthode Champenoise and so much of the technical side of Champagne that I finish up this guide with some thoughts on how the wines actually taste. As with any wine from any region, what is paramount with Champagne is knowing your own palate and preferences, and to some extent that can only come with the trial and error of tasting experimentation. There are, however, a couple of interesting nuances to tasting Champagne, relating to grape variety and to the méthode Champenoise, that can influence the flavour of the wine and which are worth knowing about. I deal with all these elements of style and flavour here, in the final instalment of my Champagne guide.

Non-Vintage & Vintage Cuvées: Nuts and Smoke

The non-vintage wine is the entry-level cuvée for most houses producing a range of wines; the blend can vary wildly as can the style of wine, although in many cases it will consist of all three of the common varieties, providing a valuable route for the Pinot Meunier, in terms of quality the lesser of the Champagne grape trio. As well as the ratio of varieties used the percentage of reserve wines, the older wines that are blended in to give character and depth, can have a significant effect on the taste. Although 20-25% is common some houses use 30% or even 40%, whereas some might use none at all. It is probably true to generalise that the greater the proportion of reserve wines used, and the older they are, the more complex the cuvée.

In contrast the single vintage cuvée is a much simpler concept than the non-vintage wine; here there is no blending of different years, no inclusion of aged reserve wines. In addition, there is less likely to be any Pinot Meunier in the blend as many houses will focus on just Pinot Noir and Chardonnay at this level, although some blends do include small a proportion of Meunier, and indeed a handful of vintage wines include a large portion. So although we would expect more ability to age, and more complex flavours with time, the actual story behind the wine is much less complex, with fewer wine-making variables influencing the taste.

Time can also influence flavour. Although once these wines were blended and aged to be ready for drinking upon release, the financial pressures of today mean that many houses place their wines on the market as soon as they are legally able to. Quality-conscious producers might leave their wines aging on the lees for 7-8 years for vintage cuvées, and 3-4 years for non-vintage cuvées, but the legal minimum is only 3 years for the former and 16 months for the latter and some houses will ship immediately the relevant minimum time limit has passed. In this case, which usually applies to the commercially important non-vintage cuvées, the wines that reach the shelves can still taste pretty mean and green, occasionally some can still reek of the sulphur added with the dosage; certainly this is true of many such wines tasted at the annual CIVC tasting in London. As such many will benefit from some time in the cellar (or whatever storage solution you have devised), anywhere from six months to several years.

Sticking with the concept of time and lees aging, this is also of extreme importance with the vintage cuvées. Whereas with the non-vintage wines it is inadequate time on the lees that might concern us, with the vintage wines it is the concept of extended lees aging that is more likely to determine the style or flavours that we experience. The phenomenon of lees protection is one upon which I have already touched in my guide to the méthode Champenoise. As mentioned above a vintage wine may rest on its lees for many years before being disgorged, maybe 7-8 years, sometimes up to 10 years or perhaps even longer, the presence of the lees protecting the wine from oxidation. So a wine managed in this way will have what is termed a 'reductive' style, essentially one which indicates it has been protected from the effects of oxygen (provided this was also the case before the wine was bottled). Such 'reductive' wines are characterised by a cleaner and more precise set of aromatics, taking in floral elements, fresh and crisp fruit characteristics, smoke and more.

Meanwhile, wines that are disgorged early and then allowed to age for many years without the nourishing lees, under an oxygen-permeable cork, will develop more 'oxidative' characteristics, especially if the wine was handled in a more oxidative fashion prior to it going into bottle. From these wines expect richer characteristics, aromas and flavours of nuts, coffee, caramel and more. I have heard the reductive aromatics described as 'grey' flavours, and the oxidative ones as 'brown', a colour-analogy which I think works rather well. A classic contrast of the two styles can be found in Bollinger, the bright and floral elements found in a recently disgorged RD demonstrating the protective capacity of the lees, whereas Grande Année (pictured above), aged under cork after disgorgement, shows a more reductive style. The two wines were, of course, exactly the same up until the point the Grande Année was disgorged (RD is simply late-disgorged Grande Année).

Blanc de Blancs & Blanc de Noirs: The Taste of the Grape

As the names suggest, these two styles of white wine are made using in the first instance entirely Chardonnay and in the second entirely Pinot, usually Pinot Noir although Pinot Meunier would be just as eligible. Indeed, a blanc de blancs Champagne could once have also included Petit Meslier, Pinot Blanc and Arbanne, but these varieties were outlawed for this style of wine (they can all still be found being legally cultivated in the region) in 1980 and so today these wines are pure Chardonnay.

The casual reader might wonder just how a white wine can be produced from the dark-skinned Pinot varieties, but this is easily achieved by running the juice off the skins as soon as the grapes are pressed, before it has had time to pick up any of the skin's pigments. Just because the wines are the same colour, however, does not imply that that favour profiles imparted by the different grape varieties will be lost. The two styles are in fact profoundly different, and a tasting of one against the other can be very instructive in the appreciation of the role played by different varieties.

A wine based on Chardonnay will often begin its life tasting quite austere, rich in acidity, with little in the way of character of aroma or flavour at all. If it does possess some character it is likely to be one-dimensional and simple, bearing just some floral fruit. Its texture is lean and bright, and the first taste might have you wondering why you have spent so much money on this expensive bottle of wine. The true joy of a blanc de blancs cuvée, however, will in my opinion only become apparent with time. These wines have tremendous propensity for ageing, much more so than that initial taste might suggest, and with time the flavour profile will develop charming notes of pure coffee grounds, enriched with elements of caramel and nut.

Although the blanc de blancs style of Champagne is commonly encountered, its counterpart is less frequently spotted. The blanc de noirs cuvées are typically 100% Pinot Noir, and in their youth they display more substance and a fatter presence of fruit than the Chardonnay wines. The flavour profile starts off and develops very differently also, commencing with a deep and sometimes earthy flavour, perhaps with elements of cheese, apple or biscuit, becoming richer and more esoteric with time. They do not possess the profoundly elegant sense of balance that can be found in the best blanc de blancs wines, but their richness can do much to overcome this deficiency. Of note, they can perform well in situations where lighter and brighter styles are less well suited, but the ardent admirer of blanc de noirs cuvées does not need food as an excuse. If you favour them, fear not, you are in good company. I am not referring to my own predilection for the style, although I am certainly quite fascinated by these cuvées, but by the long-acknowledged preference of none other than Winston Churchill for Pinot Noir, even if when dominating a blend rather than accounting for 100%. His appreciation of Pinot-rich vintages of Pol Roger is well described, and the prestige cuvée created in his honour (pictured above) has a Pinot-dominated character.

Rosé, Demi-Sec & Prestige

Pink Champagne can be something magnificent, but it can also be stupendously dull. There are two basic methods of producing such a wine, but no clear and certain relationship between the method and the quality. The most common is to blend in a red wine, often sourced from villages with a reputation for high quality Pinot Noir such as Bouzy, with a pre-existing blend. Often the base wine is one that already exists in the portfolio, so a non-vintage rosé might be the company's straight non-vintage blend with 5-10% still red wine added. Alternatively the wine can be made using skin contact, allowing the Pinot Noir and/or Pinot Meunier skins to macerate in the juice for a short period of time, maybe just hours but sometimes several days, thereby imparting their colour to the wine. Very few houses practise this technique, although notables include Billecart-Salmon, Roederer and Larmandier-Bernier.

It isn't, in my experience, possible to distinguish between the wines made using these two different methods when blind tasting, and so beyond the commitment suggested by skin contact - a process known as saignée - the above does not guide us in  terms of what to expect from the wine. Whichever technique is employed, look for delicate stone and red fruit flavours, ranging from peach and apricot through to red berries and occasionally even darker fruit characteristics.

Altering the colour with the addition of red wine is not the only style attained by cellar manipulations; playing with the dosage is also an option. A change in the dosage, that final addition of sweetened wine, obviously has much potential for altering the character of the wine. A heavy dosage, adding a large quantity of sugar to the wine, will obviously yield a sweeter, demi-sec cuvée. I'm not generally a fan of this style of wine, although a generous dosage which just edges the wine into the demi-sec category without engendering it with an overt sweetness can produce a wine with a wonderfully rich, praline-laden mouthfeel without the sickliness that the sugar can bring. I have certainly had a small handful if wines fitting this description which were very fine. Taking it in the opposite direction, omitting any softening sugar from the dosage yields a very dry style, sometimes painfully bone dry, variably labelled as Non-Dosage, Brut Zero, Ultra Brut and so on. In a riper year the style can be very successful, as the fruit itself brings enough sweetness and body to the wine to provide balance, but in a less favoured year the wines can sometimes seem painfully hollow through the midpalate. But in the right vintage these can be very attractive wines which are worth experiencing, at least once.

Finally, it seems necessary to mention the prestige cuvée, represented above by Perrier-Jouët's Belle Epoque. An amorphous grouping of cuvées incorporating vintage and non-vintage wines, which may be pure Chardonnay, pure Pinot Noir or blends thereof, blended from many sites or perhaps from one tiny walled clos, all we can say of these wines is that they are perhaps the highest expression of Champagne, as viewed through the eyes of the chef de cave in question. The grandfather of them all was of course Roederer's Cristal, which was being shipped for the pleasure of the Tsars in Russia as long ago as 1877, although from a commercial point of view it was Moët et Chandon's Dom Pérignon that led the way. Expect a high quality wine, delivered within some high quality packaging - unusual bottle shapes are de rigueur - as well as a high price. The experience, however, in many cases at least, can certainly be worth it. Even if it is just, as the prices may dictate, only on very special occasions.

• The End: Back to the introduction to my Champagne Guide