Great Wine Made Simple - Andrea Immer [56]
Champagne
Champagne is where my love affair with great wine began more than fifteen years ago. While still on Wall Street, I was doing everything I could to learn about wine and food in hopes of someday making it my career. Weekends, I worked for free as a plongeur (that’s a dishwasher, mon cheri) at a French cooking school, and nights I spent pouring and doing cleanup at a wine school. One fateful evening, an impassioned Frenchman named Rémi Krug came to the school to teach us about Champagne. His ardor for his family’s Champagnes was infectious, and it was easy to see why. As I tasted them, I couldn’t speak. For days I felt punch-drunk from the memory of those exotic scents, and it seemed as if I could still taste the flavors. When I finally came to my senses, I walked into my boss’s office at Morgan Stanley and quit. Within a month, I was in France, armed with a Eurail train pass, a youth hostel card (I still qualified), and a vineyard map (you already know my first stop). So began my graduate school.
My favorite wine is still Champagne. Along with the sensory beauty of it—the glimmer in the glass, the bewitching scents, the nerve-tingling taste—there is a lot to love from a buyer’s perspective.
Consistency You can really count on the big brand names for consistent quality, and style. Every house has its signature style, ranging from delicate and elegant, to powerful and exotic (the way I like them). This means that once you pick your style preference, you can buy by brand with confidence.
Price Compared to other world-class wines, Champagne remains quite affordable. No, it is not cheap, but really great Champagne starts at around $25 to $30 a bottle in most cities, and you can get the absolute top of the line for $100 to $150. Even better, the price/value relationship is rock solid. When you pay more, you get more, which is not always the case with other wine categories, particularly the hype-heavy ones like trophy French Bordeaux and California Cabernets.
Instant gratification This is the best part of all. Most people do not have wine cellars for storing great bottles until they are in peak drinking condition. This is not a problem with Champagne, because the wineries literally cellar the wine for you, so Champagne is ready to drink when you buy it.
But how do you choose? You have to consider your style preference and your budget. The label will guide you to a choice that satisfies both.
Champagne Styles
Champagne style has three parts: (1) House style: Light-, medium-, or full-bodied. (2) Category: classic or specialty. (3) Taste: dry or sweet. Here is how the label answers each of these questions:
BODY STYLES The “house style,” as in, light-, medium-, or full-bodied. Luckily, the factor that most affects the body style of a Champagne is also the most prominent feature on its label—the winery—because each takes its own approach to body style. Looking at these three labels, you can clearly see the name of the maker.
CHAMPAGNE CATEGORIES Most Champagne houses make several types. The major ones are, from most common to rarest, nonvintage, vintage, blanc de blancs (blanc DUH blanc), rosé (row-ZAY), and luxury. Here is what they mean:
Nonvintage In this case it’s what is not printed on the label that’s important. None of the labels shown here lists a vintage year, so all are called nonvintage. Nonvintage refers to the very essence of the Champagne production process: blending. Champagne is nearly always a blend, of vintages (harvest years) and of grapes—the reds Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier and the white Chardonnay—to maximize its complexity and consistency. Each component in the blend brings distinctive character to the whole in the same way different instruments harmonize to produce beautiful music. The nonvintage is usually the calling card of every Champagne producer, making up the bulk of production and embodying the house style. On wine