• February 20, 2012

    2011 vins clairs from the Club Tresors de Champagne

    This morning, the Club Trésors de Champagne held its annual presentation of vins clairs from the most recent vintage. I've written a little about the 2011 vintage already, and I'll be writing a more complete report on the vins clairs later in the spring. Today, however, showed a small glimpse of what a number of high-quality growers have come up with from across the region.

    Since even before the grapes were picked, it has been widely acknowledged that chardonnay is generally the most successful variety of the vintage—it had fewer problems with rot, allowing producers to harvest the grapes later in order to gain more ripeness. A Chouilly chardo
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    1. February 13, 2012

      Champagne Laherte Freres 2011 vins clairs

      Over the weekend, I read an excellent piece discussing the idea of manipulation in photography, which I found through Per Karlsson of BKWine on Twitter. In it, the author, Ben Long, asserts that all photos are manipulated: some may involve a heavy degree of Photoshop work (or darkroom work, in the case of film), yet even those that don't are automatically subject to a great deal of editing, whether consciously or not, by the photographer. Even the simple act of framing and cropping has a fundamental influence in determining what we see. "'Image editing' starts as soon as you lift your eye to the viewfinder," writes Long. &q
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      1. January 14, 2012

        Christian Holthausen, communications director for Charles Heidsieck and Piper-Heidsieck champagnes

        There are few pleasures as thrilling as drinking a great wine in maturity. On a recent visit to Charles Heidsieck and Piper-Heidsieck, I tasted a number of wines with chef de cave Régis Camus and communications director Christian Holthausen (pictured), including both vins clairs and finished champagnes. The most satisfying wines of all, though, were several old vintages of Charles Heidsieck, all of them currently in their prime.

        The first was the 1981 Champagne Charlie, drunk as an apéritif before lunch. This bottle was disgorged about ten to 15 years ago, acquiring a seamless harmony and complex richness of flavor in
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        1. January 02, 2012

          1995 Pierre Gimonnet Cuvée Oenophile Blanc de Blancs

          There is some debate about whether or not a brut nature or non-dosé champagne will improve with further aging after disgorgement. Tom Stevenson, for example, believes that non-dosé champagnes are at their very best upon being disgorged, and that a champagne cannot age gracefully without dosage. I, on the other hand, find many non-dosé champagnes to acquire more complexity and harmony with time. Some, such as Jérôme Prévost's Les Béguines or Vouette et Sorbée's Fidèle, actually need a couple of years after disgorgement to show their best.

          I do think, however, that the aging curve is shorter for a champagne without dosage, and I don't always see a great advantage in holding ont
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          1. December 06, 2011

            Krug's Grande Cuvée champagne and its new ID code indicating disgorgement date

            When it comes to providing details of its multi-vintage cuvées, Krug is one of the most notoriously secretive houses in Champagne. The mantra at Krug has always been that the Grande Cuvée is constant—it is a wine designed to maintain a certain character and profile year in and year out, regardless of the conditions of the harvest. To achieve this, it is composed of a vast blend, including over 100 base wines from up to 12 different vintages, and the house's winemakers are obsessive and exacting in their standards: no one has mastered the art of blending to a more refined degree than Krug has.

            In the interests of preserving this image—that the Grande Cuvée is consistently the same from year to year
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