 From a secret island in Virginia, the courageous Parker family run an organization called International Rescue. When a wine is in trouble anywhere in the world a big score miraculously transforms its fortunes. Milady: “What’s it worth Parker?” Parker: “Ooh… 97-98-99-100 Milady?!” Thunderbirds are GO!
You do not have to watch Thunderbirds on UK TV to know Parker has recently splurged 100 point marks all over the Bordeaux 2009 wines. But hyperbole or the danger of running out of numbers are not the only problems. The remarks below about wine scores are from comments I made recently on the excellent Susie Barrie and Peter Richards’ (both MWs) site. It’s much in the vein of a piece I posted on this blog nearly a year ago here. At the end, we’ve posted the mark scheme of Scala School of Wine, which we use from time to time. Please comment by all means.
Consumers seem to like points for wine and some follow and respond to them. The trouble is, wine critics have a kind of bulemia about scores. They all say they are the devil incarnate and beat themselves up for it and the next minute they have their head in the fridge, spraying scores for every bottle they write about and seem to think their job is to compete with the next writer or website to ‘get their scores out’ on the latest vintage from Bordeaux and Burgundy at all costs.
It would not be so bad if they did not use a weirdly doctored scale. The 20pt scale many use (with the exception of The World of Fine Wine) starts at 0 = 10 for 20 point scales and for Robert Parker’s 100 point scale 0 = 50. Scores therefore bunch, so a typical leading critic’s scores in an article oscillate around 16-17.5 or 88-90+. It’s well known that a Robert Parker score of less less than 90 is poor, pretty much a thumb’s down. Jancis Robinson too, less than 15.5 and you are toast, dull, forget it. Faced with a list of 30 or more scored wines in an article, 25 of which all score between 16 and 17.5 what do you do? Are most of them really so similar in quality? But the average punter may say, hey 15 is 75% to most, 80 is 80. This is the world of the ’1st’ at university, of the truly excellent in everything else. But in wine it is deemed below the pale.
But who knows what the scores truly mean? – they are usually defined so vaguely. There are no references to testable or shared professional criteria. Any other professional sphere but wine would be laughed out of court if its evaluation scales were stuff like ’1) Extraordinary 2) Outstanding 3) Above Average…’ etc (Parker) or called for example, as the definition of a whole score band: ‘A humdinger’ (Jancis Robinson). These may be textbook examples used to explain the phrase ‘ beg the question’ but they shed no light on wine.
Apart from that it’s not always clear if scores are absolute or relative. By this I mean, in a group of wines from a single country or region or price band, it seems many critics mark on some secret scale of the spread of quality in that segment. That seems strange to me. Performance of a hotel or car or in a university exam should share international values should they not? Wine writer and journalist Jamie Goode’s scale, adapted from the established 100-point scale, is an example of a system that judges all wines by the same criteria, as does Scalawine’s scale below. See Goode’s scale on his site WineAnorak.com here.
I guess the problem is that if a proper absolute scale were used then many of the marks used by critics would anger the merchants who sent the samples. A very good value £5 wine might get a very respectable score of 12.5 on a good absolute and proper full 20pt scale. It would be 62.5%, a pretty fair mark. But a wine critic handing out 12.5 marks would soon find the supply of samples or invitations from the trade might start drying up. And much below that too often, well, you just don’t mark that low. So mostly for wine critics, with the odd exception, a veil of silence hangs over mediocre wines.
Here’s Scalwine’s scale:
1-3 Undrinkable or cannot recommend drinking. Seriously faulty or complete deterioration. The fault or faults should be specified.
4-10 Minor wine, from dull, characterless plonk to sound and on to fair quality; includes cheap everyday quaffers and many mass-market brands. The majority of the world’s wine. Simple flavours and unlikely to improve and develop beyond 6 months to one year or so after distribution. Little or no sense of individuality or origin.
11-16 Wines of medium to high quality with increasing individuality and interest up the range. Balance, length, complexity and some developmental longevity; a recommendation should be specified with a best drinking prediction. Worth paying attention to. Borderline fine on occasions at the 15/16 mark.
17-18 Distinctive and fine; complex, excellent balance and capable of medium-term improvement with age, sometimes more. Fine wine, often ‘classic’ and super-premium. A powerful taste of specific origin and place. Aged examples in good vintages kept well, will always present further quality heights.
19-20 Very fine indeed. The international tops. Unique iconic wines in their origin, reputation and conisistency. Capable of or showing superlative development with age. Classic wine. A wine at this level nearly always has form and a track-record and widespread pundit and connoisseur recognition. One of the world’s greatest wines.
 In Part 1 we showed how special wines in great years came to shape the meaning of ’vintage’ champagne. And that this runs counter to the conventional view on planet wine that ‘vintage’ is an annual snapshot come rain or shine, and that like any photo album, you don’t always see the same face each time you look. Champagne is on the Port side of wine; a vintage should be a declaration of exceptional quality. Champagne sticks fewer photos in the album, not every year, but perhaps they look more beautiful for it.
And similar to vintage Port, which is about 2% of all the Port made each year, vintage fizz is less than 5% of all champagne. But its higher price return and as a prestige flagship for the best Champagne can do, makes vintage much more value than volume. It’s where the most animated interest of champagne connoisseurs is focused, it’s where a producers’ wines can vary more in the range, magnetising interest and letting producers develop a more natural story about champagne, reflecting what happened in a single year. And vintage Champagne has one of the great purity trump cards it should never give up and should trumpet more: 100% of what is in the bottle must come from the vintage year. For the rest of the EU and most parts of the globe, only 85% of what is in the bottle need come from the date on the label.
Good champagne’s improvement with longevity, a critical criterion for ‘fine wine’ and perhaps the Brits’ taste for older fizz, also means vintage champagne is the only sort traded on the secondary market of broking and auctions. London based fine wine platform Liv-Ex reported recently trading 23 vintage champagnes last year, at average price £130 per bottle, led by Dom Perignon, Krug and Louis Roederer Cristal. Most of us like to drink more than trade and these may not exactly be our everyday wines, but if you seriously get into champagne you will drink more vintage.
Like vintage Port, Champagne is sometimes accused of making too many vintages for cash than quality, although in the scheme of things the contribution of vintage to a producer’s bottom line is modest. Since 1995 to now only three years are lauded very great: 1996, 2002 and 2008 (lick your lips), but 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2009 are good and have or will have devoted fans. Before that, 1988, 1989 and 1990 were starry, as were 1985, 1982 and 1979. Great wines made in 1976, 1971, 1966, 1964 and 1959, but by then it’s all about where its been as much as who made it and time. Anything earlier does not come with a parachute; you’re on your own, but you may land softly. The oldest champagne I’ve tasted and was excellent, is Heidsieck 1907 Gout Américain but it had spent most of its life on the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
We do need reminding too that vintage wines don’t make themselves; they are not a natural palimpest peeled off the vineyard surface revealing its mystical truth. They reflect the proportions of grape varieties and locations of fruit selected to go into them and the regimes of each producer. They reflect the ‘house style’ just as all vintage wines reflect their producers as much as the weather of a year. To make a good vintage wine, especially in Champagne, you will spend as much time and thought avoiding or preventing the negative influences of a harvests’ conditions as you do showcasing the best.
And you’ll need to factor in such big influences as when the champagne has been disgorged, opened up to air to expel the yeast sediment and usually given a dose of sweetening too. Most champagne made by houses in any volume, say over 25000 bottles and up, will be disgorged par tranche in stages to meet orders over time, in the belief champagne is fresher and more attractive recently disgorged. Two bottles of the same champagne stored similarly but disgorged at different times, will show differences. There are fans of wines aged after disgorgement, revelling in the accelerated complexity and oxidative effects and since Champagne Bruno Paillard pioneered putting the disgorgement date on the bottle, others have followed critics’ and the tiny community of specialist fans’ pleading to do the same.
I’ve tasted some 100-odd vintage champagnes in the last three months, so here are some thoughts. These selections are not a thorough review of each year but they all show something of the year and winemaking. Scores are Scala School of Wine ratings explained here.
2007 The 2007s, from those that made them, are just emerging. It will be interesting to see how many producers have made these wines because it was a classic ‘difficult year’, winespeak for not great. The vines were roaring along to what looked like one of the earliest harvests ever when the blue skies brought ‘winter in summer’ as one house told me, and ended the party in August. Those who waited until September and sorted or sourced grapes rigorously (not always one of Champagne’s best habits) may have made good wines. 2007s out now will have not had much more than the legal minimum three years of ageing on the second yeast lees in bottle.
Lombard 2007 - Small Epernay house. Rather loose-limbed and ripeish tasting. Honied but tight finish. 12.5
Henri Mandois 2007 Very fresh but unexciting; surely needed more ageing. 12
Heidsieck & Co Monopole 2007 - Zippy but unknit and simply honeyed. 12
Dosnon- & Lepage ‘Alliae’ 2007 From Avirey-Lingey in the Aube. A small newish mini boutique house and organic. 50/50 PN/CH Use of oak. Zero dosage. Zip and interest and length, rather a big style but very good for the year and these early stages. The generosity of the Aube is there, but so too the added complexity from clever use of oak. 14
2006 Not the most promising weather with a damp cool August after July heat and then sunshine in September. Many producers like the year for its freshness, but overall not a very good year but some good wines were made. The best sites are likely to make better wines; in years like this terroir will always out and stretch the gap between average and top grapes.
Vilmart Grand Cellier d’Or 2006 – Marked by oak still but beautifully toned and judged. Very fresh and long with mild nougat, an exquisite ‘quiet’ mousse and very minerally. One of Champagne’s very top producers if you can wait for the wines to unfurl with age. A delicacy and detail that always impresses. 16
Philippe Brugnon 2006 (RC – Récoltant Coopérateur from Rilly) This will be the general Rilly coop blend sold under his own label. Toffee and bland – tired tasting. Disappointing as many coop wines are often better. 11.5
Nicolas Feuillate 2006 The giant coop. Rounded and balanced but not that complex or interesting. Green note 12
Moutard Pere et Fils 2006 - Aube; small NM with sous-marque Moutard-Diligent - A good dynamic feel to it, vibrant, lively and quite long. Quite big flavours. But not arresting or especially fine. 13.5
Christophe Mignon 2006 - Festigny, small RM domaine. Blanc de Noirs 100% Pinot Meunier. Good and characterful. Very apple pie Meunier and none the worse for it. 13.5
Larmandier-Bernier 2006 - RM star from Vertus on the Côte des Blancs. Lovely texture, so vinous and potent yet very poised and bodied; fizzing with energy and expressiveness. Excellent. 16.5
JL Vergnon 2006 - Rising RM (Christophe Constant) Mesnil-sur-Oger. Pure and very distinct and mineral but with a forceful weight and urgency. Not too tight or coiled. Very good. 15.5
Janisson et Fils 2006 (Ambonnay, small NM) Fresh and well-made, correct and well-expressed neat sweet spot of light cream with some crunch, zip and get-go. Quite up-beat and brisk, without yet showing any great complexity. 13
Deutz 2006 - Tempted to say baby Roederer. Style seems to have changed slightly from pre Roederer. Not as biscuit-aged as before, fresher and none the worse for it. Early days 14.5
2005 Not as good as in the rest of France and producers and the press have probably exaggerated the virtues of this year in Champagne. The flowering was successful but the weather up and down after with rain between warmth causing significant mildew and rot. The harvest was fine with cold nights saving a respectable acidity. There is general ripeness and generosity but I often look in vain for great subtlety in this vintage.
Taittinger 2005 A good showing from Taittinger with power and finesse and a better wine than their ’04 I think. A lovely chalky and compact feel, not wanting to be hurried. An airy and high tension note to it which is very elegantly Taittinger. Carries well into appealing length that really justifies being vintage. Taittinger’s elegant style, aiming for finesse in a year often seen as generous and plump, may well be an exceptional wine for the year. 16.5
Louis Roederer 2005 Firm and quite austere still but full of pent up Pinot flavours. Worth holding back for probable joyous complexity to come. Excellent and probably benefitting from very low malolactic conversion. 16
Jacquart Blanc de Blancs 2005 The big Aube coop brand. A creamy charm and mild mango and pastry flavours but all roped in with brimmimg zest and overall very fresh and neat. Very good value and something worth having over and above their NV. The Jacquart brand is really on song right now with a fine freshness. A very good winemaker though she no doubt is, I hope newly appointed Chef de Cave Floriane Eznack arriving from Veuve Clicquot does not make too many changes to the style. 14.5
Pierre Gimonnet et fils Fleuron 2005 Lovely Blanc de Blancs from this big single domaine in Cuis; fresh, creamy and chalky at the same time. Sappy and persistent and brim full of mineral bite. 15.5
Henri Billiot 2005 RM Ambonnay. This seemed rather ripe, full and loose-knit. Lacked a little zip and grip, touching on flabby. But plenty of big fruit and fresh enough. Not a great 2005. 12.5
André Jacquart Grand Cru Mesnil 2005 Vertus RM Detectable vanilla and nutty oak on nose but marries well with a firm, penetrating mineral and cream palate. A very classy act and although fairly ‘worked’ a good example of high class fruit and oak use in single domaine champagne. 15
2004 A gargantuan harvest and I hear all sorts of stories about what happened to the grapes over and above the legal maximum. I was there at harvest and not much was left on the ground. But the grapes at the press were usually beautiful and the musts were good and acidic. After the frost and heat of 2003, the vines responded with great vigour. The growing season after a good flowering was variable but the harvest from the middle of September on was hot and sunny. More and more this vintage excites me with very elegant wines and an understated structure.
Veuve Clicquot Rosé 2004 A good dry pink fizz, with a dried peel and exotic edge. Not sweet and simple but ripe fruit with a cream baked sponge note and a fair backbone of bracing structure. Succulent and invigorating. 14.5
Piper-Heidsieck 2005 This was noticably sweet and cloying – so much for the American market but why here in the UK? I’m sure there are fans here though, so all is forgiven. Disappointing 11.5
Perrier-Jouët – Belle Epoque 2004 Not broadened out yet but such an impressive wine; linear but so focused and gently forceful and very long. Radiates a mineral beat on the palate, very present and fine. Not at all buttery or smoky yet so this is all potential at this stage. Exudes elegance. Excellent 17
J Dumangin Fils 2005 Very small house, de facto almost domaine. Chigny les Roses. Very competent and arresting, quite structured but powerful and ripe. Slightly muscular and striding out but no mean feat and reflects the lively poise of the year. 14.5
Dehours et Fils Maisoncelle Extra Brut 2004 Small NM, de facto domaine in the Marne. A risen star but perhaps still too much under the radar. (Single parcel ) Only 3k bottles made. 100PN B de Noirs 3g/L. Rich but with a persistent warm palate, redolent of stones, seashore and quite aetherial; a savoury attractive pull and focus. All poise and avoids crude biscuit or toffee. Impressive. Alive with energy. 16
Drappier Grande Sendrée 2004 Complex, full, warm and open, rich. The Aube in 2004. Nuts and candied fruit. Complex. Open arms but quite a grip when they close around you. Flesh and rock together. Creeps up on you too and rather long. 16
Earlier vintages will be discussed in Part 3. See www.wine-searcher.com for availability and prices.
 The need for a wine to have a date on the bottle and for that date to be the year of the harvest whose fruit made the wine, has come to be something of a fetish among wine buffs. In a sense the idea is a promise of authenticity, of veracity. The bottle is a pure moment in time. So for many the first rule is that wine should be ‘vintage’. Winey people have always gloried in the minutiae of vintage variation. The cost of fine wine often rides on the year and the second rule of wine geekery is know your claret and burgundy vintages inside out.
Champagne is different. ‘Vintage’ isn’t really what Champagne seems to do. Until you look a little closer.
Only 5% of its bottles are from a single year; only about 3 in one hundred bottles imported into the UK now are ‘vintage’. The core business of every producer, from Moët to the smallest single domaine, is their standard ‘house’ brand: their ‘Brut NV’ (non-vintage). How this evolved, against the grain of wine in general, bears out my adage: champagne is made by the weather and the marketing department. In such a northern clime, where rain, rot and frost could play havoc every year with how much you could make and sell, it became the norm to make up shortfalls with ‘reserve wines’ made from previous vintages and held back. In this way you could make a standard brand each year, smoothing out the poorer years and maintain supply. Reserve wines compensated too for up to 20% losses from exploding bottles before the sugar dose for the second fermentation was made precise in the 1840s.
A ‘non vintage’ blended tradition was established, using region wide grape purchases as well as reserve wines as world champagne sales grew. Without it, holding and predicting stock levels to keep up a consistent supply would have been impossible. Customers would now know what they were getting and importantly, would know they would be able to get it. Not really different then to the mantra of every good branding agency. But it gave Champagne a fundamental quality tool. Being able to keep back a reserve of wines from previous years allowed you to add the complexity of more mature wine and in turn soften champagne’s high acidity harvests with wines from riper years. These precious ’reserve wines’ and their ability to add depth and complexity to non-vintage blends is now part of what often gives champagne the edge over other sparklers.
These blended ‘NV’ wines were more or less all Champagne made when major commercial large-scale production took off in the mid 19th century. The majority of champagne blended, as now, would contain mostly wine of a single year but with up to 35% or more from a previous or several previous years. In 1850, total production was 3.5m bottles. By 1870 it was 13.8m and largely driven by exports. These wines were generally not dated and many, especially imported unto the UK, were London merchants’ own brands.
In London society, the style was to drink champagne before and through the meal at gentlemens’ clubs, each man with his own bottle. Demand grew for much drier champagnes from Champagne which generally made hugely sweet fizz. Very ripe and abundant years, with lower acidity than normal offered the chance to make and promote a drier wine, with lower proportions of reserve wines. The big breakthrough for Champagne’s vintage reputation came with the miracle ripe and concentrated 1874 harvest, and in particular the astonishing success of Pommery 1874. From then on, the prime UK market’s demand for dry and drier wines was increasingly satisfied by the fame of the greatest and best years without the rasping acidic meanness of an average year and needing much less sweetening. The new style drier wines were made and promoted as vintage-dated. As André Simon wrote in his ‘Vintagewise – A Postscript to Saintsbury’s Notes on a Cellar Book’ (1945): ‘During the 1880s there was very little sweet champagne shipped to England; dry wines had become the rule and, as a result, vintage wines acquired a much greater importance than hitherto.’ Eventually, the leading prestige cuvées of the houses were mostly ‘vintage’ wines and therefore not made every year.
But even then, these were not pure vintage wines, it was just most of the wine in the bottle you had to assume was from the wonderful year on the label. Even in great years the practice was to blend in reserve wines from several years. Perrier Jouët’s 1874 Cuvée ‘G’ included 15% blended in from 1872 and 1873′s harvests. So began Champagne’s new modern habit of making only vintage champagnes in good ripe years and promoting them as such.
To cut a long story short, it was not until 1952 that Champagne’s controlling body the CIVC made it mandatory for champagne to be 100% from the single harvest year, with no reserve wines allowed. It also required ageing on the lees in bottle for a minimum of three years, which still stands. For NV the minimum is currently a measly 15 months, but good NVs are aged much longer. The 100% rule for vintage champagne is unique and in contrast to the EU’s general rule on dated vintage wines, that a minimum of only 85% of what is in the bottle must come from the stated year. It also gives an important separate identity to the mass of Brut NV which is a base year plus reserve wines and, on the other hand, vintage wines themselves which must be pristinely from one year alone.
Rumbling voices are often heard within the walls of power in Champagne, arguing the region should allow itself the 85% leeway enjoyed elsewhere. In other words, more or less go back to the status quo of pre-1952. In fact of course, this is a bare-faced attempt to take more profit by making 15% more vintage wine than at present and so far, give it its due, Champagne has resisted. I asked a question about these rumours a few years ago and this was the official but welcome reply from the CIVC:
‘VINTAGE REGULATIONS: Even though some producers and houses were willing to reduce the requirement for wine from a single year in vintage champagne to the EU minimum of 85%, the majority of champagne producers, together with the INAO, have decided to maintain the requirement at 100%.’ Daniel Lorson – CIVC, March 2009.
Hooray, long may it last. For all that it’s a trickle, vintage champagne is generally a higher quality product than the equivalent NV. And you pay accordingly. But for champagne buffs, knowing your champagne vintages and exploring their bottles is both de rigueur and serious fun.
Part 2 will look at some current outstanding vintage champagnes.
 We highly recommend the wines of this small house based in famous grand cru Aÿ on the southern flank of the Montagne de Reims, having followed them closely for the last eight years. But perhaps more significantly than our attentions, these wines have been lauded in fulsome terms both by Robert Parker and Jancis Robinson, having caught their respective eyes some years ago. Parker was moved to say: “This may be the finest champagne house virtually noone has ever heard of,” proving himself wrong in an instant.
The man in charge, and dynamic driving force, is the often reserved Claude Giraud, 12th generation descendant of the Aÿ based Hémart family whose roots go back to 1625. Léon Giraud, a military man, married into the Hémarts at the start of the 20th century and Claude, 60, is his Giraud-Hémart grandson. He took the reins from his father Henri in 1983. The huge changes he has made since to the quality, character and reputation of the house’s wines mean that Champagne Henri Giraud, for all its long pedigree, seems a relative newcomer to the Champagne top firmament. Certainly, these wines more or less exploded onto the Champagne scene from the early 2000s.
Various commentators refer to Champagne Giraud as a ‘grower’ but the exact position is a little different. The original Giraud-Hémart outfit was a ‘récoltant manipulant’ (RM) but from 1975 was registered as a négociant ’house’ (NM) allowing it to buy in grapes over and above what they grew themselves. However, it was not until 2007 that this actually happened when a ‘diffusion’ or entry level range of wine called ‘Esprit’ was launched. All of the premium cuvées made here are grand cru and made with Giraud fruit from Giraud land, all but a tiny amount of it in grand cru Aÿ. In that sense, these wines are single domaine champagnes. The Esprit range involves buying in some 12ha but it is bought locally and from family friends and there is close collaboration on vineyard work and methods with all the growers. In total, 8.79ha is owned, 8ha of which is in Aÿ, divided amongst 35 parcels. The field proportions are 70% Pinot Noir to 30% Chardonnay and this is the approximate blend of nearly all the finished champagnes. About 250,000 bottles are made annually.
Claude Giraud, it was announced in January 2012, has a new and parallel project afoot, to develop a winery and transport facility separate from their exisiting base in the centre of Aÿ. This new centre will also be the HQ for a négociant business Giraud Distribution, not limited to champagne wines, supplying hotels and restaurants in the Champagne region. Nothing stands still long chez Giraud. You have to admire the train racing across the plain.
Critical discussion of the Giraud style and approach has tended to focus on his use of small oak barrels for the fermentation and ageing of the grand cru vins clairs. But this is part and parcel for some forward thinking about the texture and clarification of musts for champagne. He carries out a relatively long debourbage (settling) of the pressed juice at low temperatures (10C) and in shallow enamelled steel tanks, all factors reducing convection of grape solids and the stratification of colloids with lees you want to settle out. The bourbes are a type of ‘gross lees’ or organic grape solids which unavoidably are part of the juice from the pressing. They need to be elminated as far as possible to avoid their breakdown and off-odours during fermentation. Claude Giraud adds that the volume of bourbes is bigger at Giraud because they harvest 4-5 days later than most to give their grapes maximum ripeness. He claimed in 2005 that the system at Giraud of a four day cold settling is unique in Champagne; some six years on, perhaps not unique but still unusual. This method is also a more natural way to separate the grape bourbes than the rapid process used by many in champagne which depends on adding synthetic enzymes to break down the the cell walls of the lees. And the long cold soak will also extract more grape aromatic intensity, something this house values in its strategy of off-setting fruit with oak complexity. Intense musts will partner oak better.
Allied to that, all the vins clairs of the grands crus wines, most barrel-fermented, spend 12 months on lees in small 128L barrels before bottling for the prise de mousse. Both for the Esprit wines made mainly in stainless steel and the oak-aged wines, this long settling and lees-ageing makes for richer, more concentrated wines as well as wines with a remarkably fine texture and mousse. All of the wines undergo malolactic and Claude says most of the dosages are around 9g/L. The style here is of forceful, richly flavoured wines, with the premium wines marked by oak but not over-done. But there is a notable refinement and finesse of texture, a lovely carry over the palate.
Champagne Henri Giraud’s barrels come from the Argonne forest, around Ste Ménehould 80kms east of Aÿ. This was not his own innovation; his father used the same oak but old barrels which he carefully preserved. They were the traditional source of Champagne barrels in the 19th century and before 1950 but the industry had died out when fermentation in steel tanks became the norm for the big houses. Claude revived the detailed business of obtaining and certifying oak from the Argonne, involving an established cooper Camille Gauthier, and his barrels are made by tonnellerie Vicard in Cognac. His belief is that this is not merely a ‘heritage’ exercise, but that Argonne oak gives a gentler, less aggressive texture and flavour to Champagne wines than oak from elsewhere in France, but simultaneously gives energy and pulse to the wines. Claude told me he is convinced the soils of the Argonne forest, called ‘gaize’ – a type of siliceous sandstone – retain cool moisture particularly well and lend a gentle aromatic profile to his barrels, less forceful than French oak from other places.
The Wines
THE ESPRIT RANGE
Henri Giraud Esprit NV The entry level brut NV largely from bought in fruit. Tasted on several occasions since 2006. 70PN 30CH made in stainless steel and vins clairs held 12mnths sur lie before blending. About 5% of the 20-30% reserve wines are barrel-fermented. Medium-deep – quite marked colour; floral and apple/ pear and cream , quite intense with a citrussy race running through. Mild positive oxidation hint of wood notes but in the background. Quite a statement for a brut NV, pent up and persistent.
Esprit Blanc de Blancs NV Tasted 02.11, 05.11 and 11.11. Boiught in Chardonnay from the Montagne de Reims, fermented in stainless steel with blending of 10% barrel-fermented Aÿ grand cru wine. My first tasting of this wine was disappointing – Slightly lacking in mineral attack, a touch nutty and rustic. However, much better since. Real weight and creamy, oaty texture, light brioche and freshness. Good.
Henri Giraud Rosé Esprit NV 08.09 and several times since. 70PN 22CH 8% addition of Aÿ grand cru Pinot Noir still wine barrel-fermented. It’s this mild oxidative oak influence that adds the depth and subtlety to this wine. Pale copper, crunched rose petal and tug of Pinot mushroomy development. Warm berry fruits. Very sophisticated; mild oxidative style. Creamy sticky toffee pudding note; a rather stern Ay finish. Exhilarating quite serious rosé. Tasted also London, 03.10 : Very appetising, complex rosé, dry, yeasty, long and savoury. Tasted also in 07.10 : Deep copper pink. Savoury and blueberry nose. Attractive palate and complex white chocolate and cinnamon on the finish.
THE AŸ GRAND CRU RANGE
Hommage Francois Hémart Grand Cru Ay NV 70PN 30CH Stainless steel and held six months, then six months ageing in small oak barrels, First tasted 06.06 and found intense and complex, quite austere and requiring cellaring. In 05.11 this had burnished and some quite rich buttery notes with evident oak. Creamy and long. In 11.11 this was mid-gold, a very focused nose with mild attractive aldehyde and warm straw notes, powerful and structured. A yeasty bite; long and toasty.
Code Noir NV 100PN Always from a single harvest, but not dated. Named in honour of the 2007 decoding of vine DNA from a Pinot Noir vine by French and Italian scientists. Vins clairs new small barrel-fermented 12 months. Three years on lees. 05.11 All toffee, leesy and buttery – but with impressive structure. Opulent wine aimed for food. 11.11 Complex and marked by oak, smoke, nutty boiled rice and cedar box. Real umami and butterscotch.
Code Noir Rosé NV 100PN 90% PN with added 10% still Aÿ red. Otherwise made as the Code Noir NV. 05.11 Rose petal nose. Quite aggressive mousse. Oak evident; treacle tart and bakery end. Aged 4 years. Rich complex rosé 11.11 Mousse much more integrated; cream and power.
Fût de Chène ’96 The top cuvée of the house. 70PN 30CH Barrel-fermented 12 months, small oak. Vintages made so far are: 1990, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2002. This wine was deep gold; intense flavours of new oak and oxidation, vanilla and apple – tarte tatin. But also some complex notes of coffee, cream, intense and long. Tremendous vivacity. 9g/L Tasted 06.06
Fût de Chène ’99 Tasted 03.10 Yellow; obvious burnt apple positive oxidation and powerful Pinot Ay fruit. Very much the style.
Fût de Chène ’00 Tasted 05.11 Eight years on lees. Yellow hue; complex whisky barrel; silk-like mousse. Savoury and complex, big wine. In 11.11 this was marked by oak, but with a fine mousse and whisky / aldehyde sherried note. Nutty, vanilla and spice.
Chardonnay Coteaux Champenois ’07 Tasted 05.11 Barrel-fermented one year in new oak. Early days and a little awkward but intense and tense; fine Burgundy but very tight yet and overtly oaked. Similar note in 11.11 adding slightly oily – still immature.
Ratafia de Champagne 70PN 30CH 50cls. Second pressed musts cold settled and mistelle of distilled aged wine added. Then élevage in small oak with solera type management. Tasted 05.11 and 11.11 Stylish, fruity and mouth-filling. Sweetness modest, oxidative style attractive. Aperitif.
Champagne Henri Giraud
71 Boulevard Charles de Gaulle, 51160 Aÿ 03 26 55 18 55
http://champagne-giraud.com
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 The decline in admiration and desire for serious wine engagement in the UK is typified by how little most people, even those who profess a love of wine, know or care about Austrian wine. Even inside the ark of connoisseurship, Austrian wine shares cinderella status with Germany. There’s little in supermarkets. We’re talking high arcana. Caught comparing notes with a mate about Austrian wine and it’s doubtful you would get free treatment on the NHS. Wine merchants and wine journalists have to carry on and keep calm, smiling through of course. Every year I read articles saying how a bit of luck, a couple of good vintages and pigs flying, will unlock the dam for Austria in the UK – the world’s biggest wine importer. Austria makes less than 1% of the world’s wine and they drink three out of four bottles themselves – two reasons why they don’t make the top 10 countries that export wine to Britain. The fact their big producers won’t sell ‘easy glug’ wine as cheap as our supermarkets want it, and you have a third. So most Austrian wine that does make it into the UK is posh and relatively dear and not in Tesco.
Many ’consumers’ have heard that most Austrian stuff that is over here is white and they may even have heard that the Riesling can be world class and that Grüner Veltliner, the most planted grape in Austria, is smart too and may be smugly called ‘Gruvee’ or ‘GV’ by the wine literati at dinner parties. But Austrian red wine for most people? Keep taking the pills.
Which is a shame because it is one of the coming things within wine geekdom and I’ll mention a few worth seeking out. There are well-known ‘international’ grapes making Austrian reds, so it’s not too hard to find Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Pinot Noir (often called Blauburgunder) but the most interesting are made from indiginous varieties. And for some reason, the Austrians tend to give these red grape types the prefix ‘blue’ or ‘blau’. I suppose red or black for non-white (oops, green) is a bit of a misnomer all over the world’s vineyards, so good on the Austrians for putting us right. But come to that, the Danube didn’t look blue to me either.
More and more I find Austrian reds taste distinct and exciting. I’ll hazard one reason for this is continentality in the climate whose warmth creates rich colour, ripe dense tannin and burnished intense flavours, but whose cold nights and long autumn days give freshness and crunch.
Just about the best Austrian red wine in the room for me recently was that shown in the picture - from producer Leth, in the Wagram region of the Donauland (Danube), north-west from Vienna. This wine called Gigama 2009 is made from the Blauer Zweigelt variety, usually shortened to just Zweigelt, a crossing made in 1922 from St Laurent and Blaufränkisch. The wine is dark, rich and complex but airily poised, not at all heavy for all its nearly two years in barrique.
It’s fashionable to bash oak-aged serious reds for their ‘international’ style (meaning not made locally round here in France by a small producer), a sneer I find misplaced for wines which have been oak-aged in style for centuries but which I can see the point of when criticising over-used new and raw oak, making wine seem over-oily for the quality of wine that’s been put in the barrel and which puts your mouth in a vice of dry tannin on the end. But I don’t find that an ‘international’ style, just a common or garden misjudged over-oaked red wine that’s been around a long time and is two a penny. There’s plenty of unoaked red wine that’s misjudged in other ways too. But this Gigama wine shows only wonderful poise and skill with the oak a sleek patina to exhibit the gorgeous succulent ripe tannin and provide a background to the chocolate and cooked berry fruit. The 14% alcohol is carried very well, not at all hot or heavy. There’s muscularity and ten years or more of development to come, but for now it is lithe and supple. It’s a drive in the hills on a warm day with the roof down. It goes confidently through the door of fine wine.
For those who love modern treatments of Blauburgunder outside Burgundy, Anton Bauer’s Reserve Pinot Noir, also from the loess-formed Wagram district, is a tip-top example. This is so sleek and finely-bodied with the crushed damson cherry fruit sunk convincingly into medium charred French oak to give that come hither smoke and sweet spice profile. OK it is ‘international’ but it will have many fans, especially with frankly flavoured food. At 13.5% alcohol and finely honed, I prefer this style of smart oaked Pinot to many of the sweet, hot and heavy versions easy to find from California.
I was impressed too by the red wines of Judith Beck, a graduate of the Klosterneuburg Viniculture College and with experience of winemaking at Cos d’Estournel, Piemonte and in Chile. Biodynamic (and it was a ‘fruit’ day on which I tasted the wines!), she specialises in red wines from the Neusiedlersee town of Gols in southern Austria’s Burgenland. The warm microclimates and thermal tempering provided by the lake produces marvellous Blaufränkisch, the red grape I first met as a warm fruity easy style called Limburger around Stuttgart in Germany. In Burgenland, more red wine is now made than white and Blaufränkisch leads. Judith Beck’s Blaufränkisch 2008 Altenberg Neusiedlersee showed peppery, clear and clean, long but refreshing with fine texture and a powerful sense of fruity sinew, roots deep in earth and rather more serious than most German Limberger.
Break out the band; play the Red Danube.
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 Here’s a champagne that early days though it may be, is the best I’ve had yet in 2012. Those who follow Champagne and champagne closely will no doubt remember champagne writer Tom Stevenson saying anyone who made vintage champagne in 2001 needed their head examined. Well I’m happy to delve deep into the mind of Laurent Champs, owner of single estate champagne Vilmart, in that case. He has made a fabulous wine in 2001, perhaps against all the odds. I’ve tasted this wine a couple of times in the last week and it sings, both of where it comes from and the brilliance of the winemaking.
2001 in truth was a shocking harvest to negotiate; in short, in September, after a difficult summer that alternated warmth and storms, it truly rained. Rot spread rapidly through the vineyard, cutting yield and underripe for careful growers, causing off-odours and oxidation of must for the careless. The worst year for some time and there hasn’t been a worse one since. Being in the elite of single estate champagne makers, Vilmart is of course very careful but there is a strategic plan here for quality and producing grapes that is significantly different from fruit wanted by the average big house out to buy as many grapes as possible and therefore wanting their growers to have very high yields. The vines of growers whose fruit is destined for the big houses regularly are cropped at 13,000kg/ha and up and are pulled out and replaced before 25 years old so the vineyard can keep churning out big bunches with big grapes. Young vines after all, if you push them, make for very big yields that fill millions of bottles.
At Vilmart, the yield is deliberately much lower but the vines that make this wine are much older, most over 50 years old, in one specific parcel or lieu-dit called Les Blanches Voies. Older vines make less juice but it is more complex, more concentrated and riper. They are also healthier than most, being organically nurtured along the ‘lutte raisonée’ lines of the Ampelos grouping of growers Vilmart belongs to. Without being biodynamic this approach is all about minimising chemical treatments to almost nothing by monitoring the health of each vine often and using only the minimum of preparations and no herbicide or insecticide.
But in 2001 Vilmart avoided the worst of the weather by a combination of luck and for this particular cuvée, its design. This wine is 80% Chardonnay and only 20% Pinot Noir, in fact, unusual for a domaine in Rilly-la-Montagne on the Pinot dominated slopes of the Montagne de Reims, Vilmart is in total only 40% Pinot Noir to 60% Chardonnay. A miracle therefore: the Chardonnay ripens earlier than Pinot and was picked already before the rains set in that were deestined to smash and rot the Pinot Noir in so many other vineyards that year.
The title ‘Coeur de Cuvée’ – heart of the first pressings – refers to the fact all the juice for this bottling was taken only from the middle flow of the first press cycle, the juice which is purest and higher in acidity, for finesse and longevity. The vins clairs were kept ten months in small 228L Burgundian pièces on average 1-3 years old before being bottled for the second fermentation and the wine was aged on the second lees for over six years, twice the minimum requirement for a vintage champagne. The wine is presently pale gold with an extremely fine bead giving an exquisite delicacy of textured mousse and a medium weight that belies the intensity of its flavours and their length. There are fig and vanillin notes and a refined velvet vellum nose from the wood which is not obtrusive but will integrate even further. Terry Theise refers to its ‘galvanic freshness’ but it carries more than lemony zip; there are endless details of butterscotch, pineapple and bergamot. It’s probably quite developed in its trajectory, after all 2001 will not make the oldest of bones, but there are a good ten years of development to come here yet. There’s real finesse, that poise and elegance allied to stately power, quite unforced, that confirms fine wine. At about £75 per bottle in the UK, this seems fairly priced compared to many prestige cuvées from other producers. I would not mind being offered this instead of Dom Perignon any day, lovely though DP can be. It confirms Vilmart not just as a superstar of single domaine champagne, but of tout Champagne.
See http://www.wine-searcher.com/ for stockists.
 ‘Nothing but Quality’ was the founding motto of the German family Mumm in 1827. The ‘G’ and ‘H’ stand for the Giesler and Heuser partners who joined the Mumms. Move on 150 years to the post second World War boom in the 1970s and Mumm was No 1 in Champagne. Nowadays they may play third fiddle to Moët and Veuve Clicquot if you rank by bottles made, but the Reims-based brand has terrific international visibility; its jeroboams adorn every Formula 1 podium celebration and the red Legion d’Honneur slash of its Cordon Rouge Brut NV bottle winks at you from a mile away. And there’s about 9m of them every year. Its visitor centre in Reims is a useful experience with informed multi-lingual guides who take you on a walk, shortish you will be relieved to know, of its 15.5 kilometres of cellars.
And there’s the 218ha of prized vineyards Mumm owns, nearly 75% of them of them in top grands crus such as Mailly, Ambonnay, Bouzy, Verzenay (where the famous windmill is part of Mumm) and Cramant. This gives Mumm the control and margins that should underpin great quality. And then there’s ‘heritage’ – the great story of René Lalou (1877-1973) and the glory days of Mumm when he was in charge. Unfortunately, the later years spent under the control of drinks giant Seagram from 1969-2001 seem to have emphasised volume and margins particularly up to 1995, but not great quality. Recently, things have improved, perhaps because towards the end under Seagram the brand was in the shop window looking for a buyer and took steps to pull up its socks. But both Allied Domecq and Pernod Ricard, the subsequent owners, have done far more than Seagram to lift the house. Now, with over 8.5m bottles made per annum it is again a big player and quality is high under Chef de Cave Didier Mariotti.
The founding family lost its baby a century after the birth. The GH Mumm group, having stayed German citizens, were stripped of the firm by the French on the outbreak of war in 1914. Dubonnet then bought the business from the state holding company after confiscation. In 1920 René Lalou joined Mumm. He was part of the investors’ group which took over the company from the state. At 43 he was an established Parisian lawyer and married to a Dubonnet, which presumably helped, and he took over full control in 1939, driving the firm forward, importantly breaking through in the USA. By the 1970s Mumm was the leading champagne firm making over 6m bottles. By the time Lalou died in 1973 he was still nominally Chairman of the firm at 96. Champagne Perrier-Jouët had been acquired in 1959 as was Chauvet in 1969 and Heidseick Monopole in 1972. Seagram became the main owner in 1969 and in 1996 sold off Heidsieck. In 2001, Allied Domecq bought the two houses. Pernod Ricard then acquired Perrier-Jouet and Mumm in 2005 when they swallowed Allied Domecq, and Pernod Ricard is very much the proud owner in the 21st century.
It is not entirely clear what caused the major dip in quality from the late 70s until the mid-nineties and not easy to give the period a precise date. The obvious causes are the end of the Lalou era and the sorry Seagram interregnum, when the brand was seen as a cash cow rather than a jewel to be polished and then in the face of competition from giant LVMH, as a brand in search of a new owner. Perhaps there were indifferent chefs de cave. Hubris and complacency after the great expansion? A tendency for the high dosage for the USA market to become the general style with the opprobium such sweet wines would receive from the drier palates of the leading European critics? Who knows?
What is slightly clearer however is that the building blocks for renaissance were in place at the end under Seagram from 1991. Jean-Marie Barillière was technical director from then and began a shake-up. A new winery was built. ISO 9002 followed, the first house to have it. The coup was the appointment in 1998 of Dominique Demarville as the youngest ever chef de cave in Champagne at 31, after starting at Mumm in 1994. He was in charge of Perrier-Jouet too from 2003. He was the creator of the now discontinued Mumm Grand Cru, presumably unnecessary given the revival of Cuvée R Lalou. He had studied viticulture and oenology at Avize and Dijon with starry success and worked at Philippe Gonet and Baujet-Jouette before Mumm. Most attribute the start of Mumm’s recent renaissance largely to him. He is now chef de cave at Veuve Clicquot and his successor at Mumm is the enormously talented Didier Mariotti who worked alongside Demarville to guarantee a successful transition.
The historical glory years were undoubtedly under René Lalou, the man of Mumm, and a Champagne great. His business talent and drive also included the huge expansion of vineyard ownership for Mumm which helps to make the firm such a profitable player today. His vinous monument was Cuvée René Lalou, Mumm’s prestige cuvee, announced in 1969 but discontinued by Seagram after the 1985 version – a period of 19 years in which only nine vintages were made. It was generally 50% Pinot Noir and 50% Chardonnay. This prestige cuvée was revived in 2007 with the launch of Cuvée R Lalou 1998 in a similar style to the original but with significant differences of selection and winemaking and followed by Cuvée R Lalou 1999 launched in 2011. Mumm wanted the name to change somewhat to avoid ‘copying’ the original. The gorgeous fluted bottle mould of the original design had to change too because rights to the design had unfortunately been sold years before. The two bottles are shown side by side in the picture taken at Champagne Mumm in 2011 above, the senior one on the right being the last edition of that series, vintage 1985 and the new series first vintage 1998 on the left.
The first officially released vintage of the original Cuvée René Lalou was the 1966, although it appears limited editions were made in 1961 and 1964 too. Mumm confirms these vintages: 1966, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1979, 1982, 1985. A 1989 was produced but never commercialised. The 1969 was the official champagne served on the first Concorde flight of 26th May 1976, Paris-Washington. Incidentally, there are references to the 1985 being the late Queen Mother’s favourite champagne ever. As the only one of the line-up I have ever drunk, I can confirm it was pretty impressive.
Lalou was friends with the Japanese painter Leonard Foujita. The rose image on Mumm’s Rosé is from a detail on Foujita’s painting ‘La Petite Fille à La Rose’ (in Mumm’s Paris HQ). In 1966 Lalou built a chapel on the premises at Mumm in Reims dedicated to Notre Dame de la Paix, his second memorial, along with Cuvée R Lalou. Foujita had converted to Catholicism in 1959 and promised Lalou who was godfather at his baptism in 1959, that he would help design the chapel. The building was given to the city, is open to visitors and contains striking Foujita frescoes – see picture below.
The predominance of grands crus villages in Mumm’s 218ha estate is impressive but makes it only 20% self-sufficient in grape supply. The great maw of the Cordon Rouge Brut NV’s approximately 9m bottles a year needs feeding. But the pedigree of holdings is frankly liquid gold: 35ha (PN) in Mailly, a whopping 37ha (PN) Ambonnay, 14ha (PN) Bouzy, 21ha (PN) Verzy, 18ha (PN) in Verzenay, 10ha (PN) Aÿ, 12ha (PN) Vaudemanges, 38ha (PN) in Avenay, 10ha (CH) Avize, 20ha (CH) Cramant and 3ha (PM) in Dizy.
The Cordon Rouge Brut NV is 88% of total production and uses wines from 77 crus. It is generally about 45PN, 30CH and 25PM with 8g/L dosage which Mariotti says is not different nowadays for different markets and, like many champagnes in these riper times, has been reducing in dosage. Johan Jaarry the assistant winemaker in charge of elevage and bottling in Reims told me that each annual production is a single blend without constant variations in volumes of fruit from different growers. Reserve wines make up some 20%. I have tasted this often in France and the UK and it is certainly drier and crisper than 15 years ago when it seemed sweet for the US market and tasted dull. But I do find bottles vary in their charms still, sometimes slightly green and piney, sometimes riper and rounder than others. I may not mind variation but I would like a little more depth of flavour – more reserve wines, longer on the lees? – given the customer is often asked £30 and more per bottle (UK). I reported here recently that tasting blind, it was not particularly easy to tell a Mumm NV from the NV Bruts of the other two leading houses: Moët and Veuve Clicquot.
The famous monocru Blanc de Blancs Mumm de Cramant NV, 100% CH of course, produces some 100k bottles per annum, usually from a single year but the wine in not vintage dated as it gets less than the requisite three years ageing on second lees to qualify. It is made at 4.5bar, a distinctly lower preessure than normal and used to be called ‘Crémant de Cramant’ before that word for ‘lightly foaming’ was allocated for other sparklers made champagne method in France. I often find this wine beguiling with a lovely finesse and cream-coffee flavour with Cramant’s insistent carry and a finish of lilies. Sometimes, particularly in the past, it has seemed a little too green but it can age well to give lovely hazlenut and smoky flavours. The dosage is about 6g/L. I wonder why it is not aged a little longer and sold as a vintage wine.
Apart from the relaunched Cuvée R Lalou, the Brut Millésimé vintage wines show a powerful Pinot Noir backbone, lovely complexity and pent up energy and impressive balance. They seem wound up and big when young and surely need cellaring if you are keen to see their potential. The 2004 and 2002 are noted below. The Rosé NV is dry and made by blending still red wine with some of the Brut NV cuvée to give overall proportions of 60PN, 22CH and 18PN, with 6g/L dosage and can be appealingly crisp and redolent of tangy red berries. Recent versions are much better than 5-10 years ago. A GH Mumm Demi-Sec is not the Cordon Rouge with a different dosage but a separate blend of 55PM, 35PN and 10CH, 18% reserves and 40g/L dosage, to give a lovely match with foie gras, light desserts and powerful cheeses. It’s not sweetness alone that is the key here, but the round fruit complexity of the Pinot Meunier.
I have been lucky enough to taste twice a new wine, Mumm de Verzeney not yet on the UK market but there may be a small allocation in the future I hear. This is a Blanc de Noirs 100% Pinot Noirs selected entirely from Grand Cru Verzeney – for notes and a picture, see below.
It seems strange that for 13 vintages from 1985-1998 Mumm lacked a true prestige cuvée given its gilded vineyard resources in grands crus. The Cuvée R Lalou is a welcome return and resounding success. Notes for the 1998 and 1999 are below. The wine is about 50% each of PN and CH, selected from up to 12 best parcels of lieux-dits from the grands crus of the estate, the dosages are oak-aged and about 6g/L and lees-ageing is 8-10 years. The overall style emerging from these two revivalist wines points towards quite a tall order for Champagne: a wine which blends equally the finesse and ringing minerality of Avize and Cramant Chardonnay with the powerfully structured Pinot Noirs of the Montagne de Reims. While each parcel makes its contribution it seems to me we are seeing a triumph for tout Champagne, avoiding the often heavily autolytic or biscuit style of Pinot dominated wines but adding power and richness to the intense and elegant Côte des Blancs fractions. A dialectic of poise and kinetic potential which could take years to unfold, especially in the 1998, and is full of promise. Other prestige cuvées such as Cristal and Dom Perignon may be more or less equal proportions of the main varieties sourced mainly from the Montagne and Côte des Blancs and can show the reticence and mineral intensity on release that Cuvée R Lalou seems to aim for. Mumm is keeping good company, no question of that.
Tasting Notes
Cordon Rouge NV Tasted on many occasions. Recently quite full and structured and ripe, robust, drier and invigorating after years of seeming inconsistent and over-sweet. Still a touch green and piney at times and I wonder if the value for money is completely convincing without longer ageing and a higher fraction of reserves. Not so easy, tasted blind, to distinguish from the other mass volume NVs from Champagne.
Mumm Rosé NV 01.09, 04.11 and 01.12 Has been rather dull and flat but very much perkier recently with fresh berry fruit and a burnished roundness from the Meunier yet not at all cloying. A lovely dry and crisp red fruit impression.
Millesime ’99 10.09 Quite raw meaty nose; complex and autolytic palate – sherbet and toffee. Attractive but not top.
Millesime ’04 04.11 Showing lovely balance from this persistent and not over-forceful vintage style. Just beginning to show some toffee and mocha development in the background. Very good wine.
Millesime ’02 01.12 6g/L 68PN 32CH The impression of smashed crystals and a persistent creamy length that many’ 02s exude, full of energy and potential. A fine texture and finesse for all the Pinot dominance; not at all phenolic. Still immature but getting there. A very good wine and noe of the best 2002s I’ve tasted.
Mumm de Cramant Blanc de Blancs NV Tasted on many occasions. One of Champagne’s good curiosities – a ‘crémant’ lower pressure mousse style, though not unique. Recently much improved having often been slightly ‘green’ in the past and inconsistent. Delicate and lightly bready. Soft mousse. Coffee cream biscuit character and mild hazlenuts with a little keeping. I believe this would be better with longer ageing and declaration as a true vintage wine.
Mumm de Verzeney Blanc de Noirs NV 100PN (not yet in UK) 04.11 and 01.12 Not noticably dark coloured but a powerful nose of red fruits and red skin vinosity. Mouth-filling but with excellent gently unfolding mousse, a powerful pniot impression but not aggressive. A high class Blanc de Noirs; let’s hope it comes to the UK. I tasted the ’98 version – like the Mumm de Cramant, this wine is from a single year but this is not a dated vintage wine, presumably because it is not given three years of ageing.
Rene Lalou ’85 11.98 London. Startling balance avoiding over-biscuit or fruity notes but with smoky development and brioche with a lovely finesse of texture and great length. Easily a superior chamapagne. The last vintage made of Lalou Series 1.
Rene Lalou 98 11.09 London, Mid-hue; cream and herbal nose. Builds, and is warming. An intriguing balsamic note but with terrific freshness. Long and very, very good. Tasted again with Michel Letter, (Dir Gen Adjoint Mumm) at Mumm, Reims 10.10: Nuanced and full with lily and citrus nose; great delicay with richness too. A hint of whisky barrel aldehydes and umami but avoids crude biscuit character. Cream and coffee and spice. Very long. Magnificent. Tasted later the same evening from magnum – much more austere and undeveloped, a real proof of the snail’s pace of larger bottles.
In London, tasted again a month later 11.10 – very similar note. Tasted again 02.11 London: Light gold; Still closed nose but the following complexity on the palate is exceptional. Has lemony and aldehyde whisky note seen before – this time on the end. Very impressive again. All the ripeness and finesse and power of ’98 beginning to show.
Mumm René Lalou ’99 Tasted London 02.11 6g/L A real baby – closed. Lily and wild flowers; cream but crystalline minerality, like a waterfall mist. Water on rocks. Chewy mid-palate, still very reserved. Good. The (Finnish) Champagne Magazine had put this down from 3rd(for the ’98) in its 2009 awards to 99th position for the ’99 a year later. Admittedly this had been recently bottled, but my tastings show this to be a magnificent wine, perhaps not as crystalline as the ’98 but very good. Tasted 04.11 at Mumm, Reims: Very refined, the same cream and herbal family notes as the ’98, almonds and lilies and very young still. Powerful and long with a lovely finesse of texture. Tasted in London 01.12: Somewhat more open now and very appealingly fresh. having been disgorged in 2011. The slightly softer ’99 vintage more discernible now and it’s looser-limbed than the ’98 but with lovely finesse and a bitter almond finish and still firmly structured. Very attractive and refined, modern champagne.
 
Champagne GH Mumm,
29, rue du Champ de Mars,
51100 Reims
0033 3 26 49 59 69
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 Champagne Mailly Grand Cru makes high quality champagne, well worth seeking out; we think so and so do many other commentators. But it is a ‘coop’, short for ‘cooperative producer. In the UK perhaps especially, ‘Coop’ is not a thrilling name, reminding us of a chain of grocers which before that was an old mutual society selling life assurance and funerals to several millions of industrial northerners. Even wine lovers nowadays tend to see wine coops as the source of cheap and dependable own-label wine brands for supermarkets. There are still a lot of wine coops in Europe, even if not quite as many as there were. The traditional model from the 1920s and 30s in France, was of a large village winery to which the local grape growers sent their grapes for cash. Most growers lacked the plant or expertise to make their own wine; the coop did it for them and the marketing too.
But it may come as a further shock to learn that wine coops are a vital part of Champagne, which is seen by many consumers as posh and which, as the richest and most successful wine region in the world, has never denied being posh either. In fact, there are more coops in Champagne than any other French region, 140 last count, although many are now federated into large coop conglomerates. Champagne coops press about half the harvest grapes of all Champagne, mostly for the big house brands such as Möet, Mercier, Veuve Clicquot and Mumm. But they also make their own brands or supermarket wines, in all about 9% of all the finished bottled champagne made. And the big daddy of them all, Champagne’s largest coop, is a behemoth, federating 80 smaller coops under the roof of a single entity, with 5000 grower members and making the wine of 7% of the whole Champagne vineyard: CVC Nicolas Feuillatte. Champagne Feuillatte is now the 5th biggest wine brand worldwide.
Champagne Mailly Grand Cru however, is not quite like most Champagne coops. Think high quality. It is set in the Montagne de Reims 100% grand cru rated village of Mailly and makes only wines from this commune’s vineyards. It is thus a ‘mono cru’ coop, using grapes only from Mailly; every bottle is 100% grand cru. Some 80 growers belong to or rather actually ‘own’ their coop, coming from 25 families. From their 70ha of vines from a total of 284ha for Mailly as a whole, some .5m bottles are made each year putting Mailly Grand Cru distinctly in the boutique bracket for size. That’s about the same size as Champagne Ruinart, the oldest champagne house of all. Do visit – they welcome visits and they are really informative, big on pride and information, low on Champagne flim-flam. When I visited, a pre-arranged 4pm trade appointment, we did not leave before nearly 8pm waved off into the night with a brilliant Reims restaurant recommendation in our ears which they had phoned ahead and booked. They are unmissable, a modern outfit on the main road through Mailly, with a pale blue glass tower in the car park.
The village of Mailly was always grand cru for red grapes and its Chardonnay was promoted in 1986. The plantings for the village are 89% Pinot Noir, 7% Chardonnay and just 4% Pinot Meunier which is excluded from grand cru status, not just in Mailly but in all grands crus. None of the Champagne Mailly Grand Cru wines contain any Meunier. Some 85% of the wines here are their own marketed wines with just some 15% of production given over to private labels or BOBs (‘buyers’ own brands – supermarkets etc). 50% is exported.
Xavier Millard, the Export Director, talked of the esprit of a good coop: ‘Everyone gets their bread from the same shop, so its better to make good flour.’ The coop has recently begun to vinify some plots separately, based on separate terroirs within the mono cru. Where possible, indigenous yeast is used. Fermentation temperatures are cool – 8-12C. The installations are modern. Malolactic is completed. There is some wood fermentation with 80 pièces, from Chateau Margaux’s 2/3 year old Pavillon Blanc second hand barrel stock and these wines make up 5% of the Brut NV. Movement of the grapes and must in the cellar is mostly by gravity – and storage is at 20m deep, galleries dug and built by the coop workers between 1929 and 1965 who at the time gave up three weeks annual labour to the construction project. Remuage of the cuvées in clear glass is done by hand.
The style of Mailly, nurtured by Chef de Cave Hervé Dantan, with its often north facing vineyards, is quite severe and structured, certainly majestically powerful when good but with a race and mineral excitement that is impressive. The Pinot Noir fraction dominates most of the wines is high and dosages are restrained, all giving a crystalline and savoury impression. It has been suggested Mailly’s terroir imparts a slight chocolate aroma – certainly a term often given to the nose of very cool climate Pinot – from Germany and Alsace for instance. The vins clairs and subsequent wines do have much less primary fruitiness than say, Bouzy. Our tasting of 10 vins clairs and final blends for cuvees from the ’07 vintage showed the dramatic contribution to roundness and complexity from the reserve wines. The final blend of the Brut Reserve NV was 70% from ’07 (5% fermented in oak) and 30% reserves from ’96, ’97, ’98, ’00, ’01, ’04, ’05, and ’06. The range is subdivided into ‘Les Classiques’, ‘Les Spéciales’ and ‘Les Artistiques.’
The Wines – tasted in Mailly, 02/2008 & several times since in London
Brut Reserve NV 75PN CH25 10g/L Mid-pale; expressive honey and white chocolate nose. A broad palate with a pleasant oxidative note. Slightly linear palate. Well-structured style, citrus and touch savoury note. Chalky, quite severe but very good.
Extra Brut NV 75PN 25CH 0g/L The coop have made some zero dosage for fifty years. Extremely elegant and mineral but with floral and fruit notes that prevent any tartness. Five years on lees.
L’Intemporelle ’03 60PN 40CH 8g/L Very fresh and mineral with emerging smoky and mushroom notes. Rich texture and presently quite severe and intense in its ripe length and structure.
Brut Millésimé ‘02 75PN 25CH 6g/L Smoky, sous bois nose; very expressive – chocolate, spice, nuts, cocoa, cream. Lovely weight and poise. Way to go.
Le Feu ’00 75PN 25CH 8g/L 2000 was the warmest ever year up to that date. Mango, butterscotch and peach; ripe but well-structured.
Blanc de Noirs NV 100PN 6g/L Quite chewy and severe but a match for richer foods. The same wine a year later in London: Medium straw; a big ‘bite’, red-wine full palate and Pinot flavours. Savoury. Firm structure, medium long. Needs 3-4 years. Good.
Les Echansons ’98 75PN 25CH From old vine parcels. 6g/L Smoky and mushroom nose, developed. A shimmering sherbet and lime impression, racy and dynamic. Very good.
Brut Rosé NV 90PN 10CH Made saignée. 8g/L Pure red fruits and persistent.
Demi-Sec NV 75PN 25CH 35g/L 40% ten year old reserve wines. Lovely balance and succulence. Dense, citrus and cream.
Champagne Mailly Grand Cru
28 rue de la Libération, 51500 Mailly 0033 2 26 49 41 10
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http://www.champagne-mailly.com/
 If you already love good German wine, especially its modern exponents who can work wonders with dry and off-dry wines that go well with food, you have probably heard already of The Wine Barn. If not, it is Iris Ellman’s baby and the most exciting specialist German wine merchant in the UK. Either way, she is making a great offer to novices or connoisseurs alike.
For Scala School of Wine contacts through this website, she is offering a reduced price to taste her complete range of German wines and meet the winemakers in central London next Monday evening 16th January, 6.00 to 8.00pm. I can assure you, having seen her range of wines develop and expand over the years, that the quality here and the readiness of the makers to come and pour and talk about them, is stunning.
This will be a very relaxed walk about occasion. If you mention this offer from the Scalawine site, you will receive a special price of £22.50, 10% off the usual ticket price.
The Place: The St James Hotel and Club, downstairs in the Mayfair & Granville Rooms, 7-8 Park Place, London SW1A 1LP.
The Time: 6-8pm, Monday 16th January 2012
Price: £22.50 Book your place: 01256 391211
More information: http://www.thewinebarn.co.uk/download/129
 If you already know this is a small boutique-in-a-boutique champagne house, you are well informed. You may even be a champagne geek. There are well over 200 champagne houses, let alone the myriad single estate producers too – well over 2000 of those! – and even enthusiasts might be hard put to reel off more than twenty well-known names. But if you are keen to be in the know about champagne and Champagne, note bene this name. It’s pronounced ‘pl-why-ay shack-a-ma’ if the name puts you off. This report is here because the champagne made is really rather good. The bonus is that if you and your best friend want to spend a night or two away from the bustle of Reims or the (sometimes drab) charms of Epernay when in the champagne region, then do consider staying here where there is a lovely welcome and well-run bed and breakfast operation too, right in the very pretty Montagne de Reims village of Ludes. Stay or not, they welcome visitors so if you visit Champagne, put this in the itinerary and phone them for an appointment – you will get a useful smiling and informative tour and tasting about as far from the touristy flim-flam of the biggest champagne house of them all, as you could imagine.
This producer was acquired in 2004 by Groupe Prieux, a NE France specialist in garden centres and small hotels. Prieux acquired 34% of small house Champagne Gardet in Chigny-les-Roses in 2007 too and in 2010 raised their stake to 99%. Firms with little previous activity or experience in Champagne buying up small houses can create some anxiety amongst wine lovers as to quite what the direction and quality of the firm will be in future. So far my feeling is that quality here has actually improved, at all levels of winemaking. The finished wines have never been better.
The reputation of this house has certainly travelled: some 80% of the 90-100,000 bottles produced each year are now exported. A Mr Marcel Ployez, married to a Mme Yvonne Jacquemart, founded the business in 1830, just as the modern champagne industry was taking off. Nowadays the business is run by the grand-daughter of the founding pair, Laurence Ployez-Jacquemart. Only 2ha of vineyard are owned, making them only 10-15% self-sufficient, but the contracts they have with their grape suppliers, all in premier or grand cru villages, are long-established. Of the land they hold themselves, 1ha is Pinot Meunier in Ludes itself, a premier cru village, and there is another 1ha of Pinot Noir in nearby grand cru Mailly on the Montagne.
The juice is pressed and only the purer first-pressed cuvée is used. There is a very painstaking settling process for the juice. The first fermentation is in stainless steel with an important fraction in barriques bought from Burgundy to give added complexity to the rosé and small proportions of other cuvées, although the Liesse d’Harbonville is wholly made in wood before bottling. Malolactic is completed in all the wines, except the top cuvée Liesse d’Harbonville in which it is blocked completely and in the Brut Extra Passion, one thirds of the blend has no malolactic.
The practice here is an admirably long aging time on the second lees in bottle – three years minimum for the lesser wines and six years minimum for the vintages. For a small producer I noticed on my visit that the cellars are unusually quite deep and cool compared to the often shallow caves of many small houses and growers. This no doubt promotes the lovely mousse texture the wines show on tasting. The vintage wines are aged for two years horizontally sur lattes in the normal Champagne way but then, unique to this house as far as I am aware, are stored upside down ’nose-to-punt for a further four, which reduces the wine’s direct contact with the yeast, making, as they explain, for a more delicate and complex array of flavours in the finished wine. Dosages are 4-6g/L , even less in the Liesse d’Harbonville, giving elegant and transparent wines. All of their wines repay some cellaring after purcahse, especially everything above the NV Brut entry level and the rosé wine.
The quality here is triumphant and puts this house in an important position as a source of excellence amongst the plethora of tiny houses whose wines may not be well-known. I highly recommend them.
The Wines
Ployez-Jacquemart Extra Quality Brut NV Tasted 08/08 and 04/11 60 PN/PM 40CH Very refreshing but with attractive creamy undertow to its medium intensity. Consistent with first impression a couple of years ago – impressive in a minor key.
Extra Quality Brut Rosé NV The same blend as the Brut NV but with the addition of pinot noir still wine fermented in oak.
Ployez-Jacquemart Brut Extra Passion NV 12/11 Straw yellow; quite honied and ripe-flavoured but showing an impeccable finesse of mousse and persistent length. A sense of volume and intensity and restraint that is not forced, but compact, understated, all in tension and with remarkable harmony. A lingering complexity and shows the care and aging at this house.
Extra Brut Blanc de Blancs 2002 100CH 4-6g/L The grapes are sourced impeccably from the Côtes des Blancs and Ludes. The wine shows delicate ripe pear and lily notes with a hazlenut complexity emerging. The texture is gorgeously restrained and allows the dynamic force of the mineral 2002 quality to come to the fore with real finesse and tension. Impressive now but will unfold hugely in future. Very good.
Cuvée Liesse d’Harbonville Brut 1996 70CH 30 PN/PM Fermented completely in 225L small used barriques and held on lees between rackings for six months before bottling. Held on lees for 10 years before disgorging and release. Shows the typical structure of 1996, taught and ripe simultaneously yet is still relatively immature for all its time on lees. One of the best 1996 survivors, not all of whom have stood the pace of time.
For stockists, see www.wine-searcher.com
Champagne Ployez-Jacquemart
8, rue Astoin, 51500 LUDES
0033 3 26 61 11 87
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http://www.ployez-jacquemart.fr/
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