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Posts Tagged ‘Chardonnay’

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Spring from winter

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

March seemed to flit by, notwithstanding the horrid weather.

It was a busy period at Park Lane with our plans for personalised champagne moving forward and gathering traction and shape throughout the month.  If anyone knows someone who would be a super salesperson for the corporate champagne market in London, please email me - in absolute confidence.

At this time of year, the tirage is occurring in the Champagne region.  Literally, this is the bottling of the previous year’s harvest according to the recipe the cellar master has devised from the juice he has to hand.  The blending - or assemblage - will already have been decided.  Remember champagne is a blend of grapes and, in the case of Non-Vintage champagne, a blend of grapes and years.bpl-champagnes-2008

So each producer has decided what proportions of chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier will be blended together to reproduce the house style this year.  Drilling down another layer, the decision should have included what percentage of chardonnay from vineyard 1, what percentage from vineyard 2, etc., to be absolutely sure the resultant style will be as desired.   In addition, how much of the juice from the different grape types (cepages) from earlier harvests (vins de reserve) will be included.  Decisions decisions but these are important ones that cannot be underdone later!

And then the yeast and sugar solution (to feed the yeast) is added at the same time.  The bottles have a crown cap (similar to a beer top) fitted, are shaken and then head down to the cellars for the start of their ageing in bottle.

The yeast live in the bottle, gobble up all the sugar, emit CO2 as their by-product (the source of the magic bubbles) and then die.  It is argued that more lengthy ageing in bottle (the legal minimum is 15 months) gives the wine more time in contact with the yeast, and thus more opportunity to acquire complex overtones with vanilla/brioche type aromas…

I always think that the producer’s cellars resemble a medical operating theatre during the tirage period.  External contractors arrive with special machines to carry out the bottling, pipes and hoses criss-cross the floors from various tanks and vats, bottles rattle through the machine with terrific accuracy, pace and noise (the operators all wear headphones), and people scurry to and fro loading bottles into crates for transportation to and laying down in the cellars.  After the work is done, champagne all round;  how very French!dsc_0392dsc_0395

I am off to see the champagne producers later this month so should be able to report back on the market from the cellar face, so to speak.

Until then, please find me a great salesperson!

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Farming - the non-vintage way

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

And why am I covered in this grubby dust sheet?

Farming is diverse.  I am a farmer (Highland Cattle), I have friends who are farmers and our champagne producers are also farmers.  Like me, they nurture and grow their raw material (grapes), at the mercy of the elements and making best use of their natural resources.

Terroir helps explain the unique characteristic of wines due to the location (orinetation, soil, micro-climate, etc.) of the vineyards where the grapes grow;  by unique I mean what makes, for example, chardonnay from ‘hill one’ so different to chardonnay from ‘hill two’.  It is this individuality which is exacerbated in the production of champagne since there are so many elements to be blended together to make the perfect wine and maintain a house style.

Obvious question: how come many of us have a favourite champagne that we chose year after year, notwithstanding that the raw ingredients are so different from year to year depending on the weather and harvest?

Simple answer - the skill of the blender.  The blending of non-vintage champagne allows the blender or oenologist the opportunity to create a “house style” for their champagne and to mostly replicate this year after year.  Remember: non-vintage champagne is a blend of both vintages (years) and grapes.

Now if champagne was produced every year from that year’s harvest as happens for most other wines - in other words, if we had vintage champagne every year - then it would be much more difficult to have a “house style” as the vagaries of individual harvests would have such an impact on the end wine;  the blender would not have the opportunity to use wines from previous years (up to 20 years in the case of Nomine) to recreate the bubbles of familiarity.

Every year’s harvest is unique and unique harvests give the ingredients for unique wines;  in 2003 Bollinger grasped this opportunity and produced a fabulous but highly unusual vintage champagne which reflected the astonishing weather (and thus harvest) that year.  Try some if you can find some - only a few thousand bottles were ever made.

So, we breed highland cows and then we sell them; some for breeding stock, some for pets (?!) and some for arguably the World’s best beef.   Often other people complete our job to produce the end product.   In champagne terms, we are the wine grower.  Some champagne houses, including some of the very best known, are the people who finish the champagne job - the wine makers.

Claude Nomine and his family are that special and sadly fast disappearing breed of recoltant - both wine grower and wine maker;  they see the process through from vine to wine.  That explains why we love dealing with them and why we love their champagnes.  They control every aspect of production and this is reflected in the quality of the wine;  that is why the personalised champagne we offer is so good - because it is well made and delicious!

Just occasionally, however, we are not the bovine equivalent of wine grower.  Instead our animals are inadvertent but willing “celebrities”.  Bovril are hosting a competition to invest in refurbishing the Great British outdoors.  Although none of our animals head Bovril’s way for their beefy beverage, we were thrilled when they asked if they could borrow one of our beasts for their photo shoot - although a bit bemused when they also asked if they could drape a used decorator’s sheet over her and take photos by the only broken gate on our farmland…  I loved it!   The cow did too… not sure,though, that Nick did as he was crouched behind the cow keeping her steady for nearly three hours during the shoot…!

I don’t think there is a champagne producer category for this type of farming activity!  Maybe, though, there is something here for Davina McCall to look into when the Big Brother series finishes in 2010?

@ThisisDavina (Davina McCall)

@nonvintage (me)

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Harvest - the pressing

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Champagne is a big subject;  controversial and emotive with nearly everyone having a different opinion as to which champagne they prefer and why.  Certainly with 8,000 producers in the region and each producing probably three different styles, there is plenty of choice!

We are often asked which is the “best” champagne;  what a question and where  to start? Vintage or non-vintage (a debate for another day), pink or white, single grape variety or traditional mix (Chardonnay only champagne is a blanc des blancs), with food or without?

Unfortunately (or fortunately) because taste is so very personal and subjective, I am not sure there can ever be a definitive answer to that question.  Origin and quality of grapes, age in bottle, experience of oenologists, etc., will all play a part as a comparison for quality - but ultimately the consumer has to decide for the themselves.  We like well made and well aged champagne that pleases most of the people most of the time - and we think our champagnes fulfill this brief perfectly.

But still the harvest continues where all of this debate really starts.  The 100,000 or so harvesters load their 50kg buckets into lorries which head to pressoirs, which press the grapes.  Traditionally a basket press was used by all but now presses up to three times that size are common in the rush to press the precious baubles.

The basket press holds 4,000kg of grapes (roughly an acre’s worth of yield) and a maximum permitted 2,550l of juice is extracted:  2,050l of first pressing or cuvee (best) and the remainder as taille, all kept separate.  Any remaining juice is sent off to become industrial alcohol.  The pressing is quick (4 hours) so that the dark skins of the pinot grapes do not rupture and thus tint the clear white juice - unless pressing for pink champagne.  A mystery explained: why champagne is a white wine when a majority of grapes used to make it (typically) are black.

Loading the traditional basket presses2 aditional basket presses beginning the big squeeze

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Harvest - busy busy

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

So here it is - and you heard it first on Alastair’s champagne blog:  2009 looks to be an EXCEPTIONAL harvest.  That means not just an ordinarily good harvest that could qualify as a vintage declaration;  it means an EXCEPTIONAL harvest and that is not a word to use unadvisedly or lightly but rather reverently and deliberately, especially where champagne is concerned!

This year the quantity and quality of the grapes is excellent - they are very sound and perfectly ripe.    The natural alcoholic strength is about 10 degrees with excellent acidity between 9 and 10!  All bodes well for the future and the continued theme of high quality contents for your personalised champagne.  Thank you too to Mme Nomine for the update.

I am visiting Epernay next month and look forward to the opportunity of tasting some of the still wines (chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier) separately stored from this harvest and gently fermenting - which is a huge privilege and eye-opening experience.  Amazing that the acidic sharpness - causing that cheeky tingle in the cheeks of the mouth similar to the feeling after eating fresh rhubard - mellows so much with age and blending to create lovely non-vintage champagne three to four years hence - or in this year’s case a vintage as well (but not for a minimum of five years).  Not forgetting the maker’s skills, of course…

There seems a certain irony that this year, of all years, there is a bumper harvest in terms of both quality and quantity of grapes -when the potential revolt over yields has resulted in a permitted harvest for stock purposes of sub 10,000kg/hectare.  C’est la vie!

And just in case you are wondering, the actual harvesting is very hard work;  this is a snapshot of what it all looks like - at the vine face, so to speak:

An uphill battle?
Not the athletics track...Heavy when fullWhat a lovely bunch

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Harvest time

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

Pinch punch and all that as the first of September is now with us.  A busy month on all fronts as the different European countries start to rub the holiday sand from their eyes.  Who knows how things will pan out in this sprint up to Christmas but one thing is for certain - it is looking to be extremely busy and hectic at Park Lane.  Two client intranet sites go live this month, the interest and feedback from our own site has been very significant and a beta version will hit the decks around week 40.  The Frisky Partridge (our hamper range) has undergone a serious nip and tuck, will also be available online from the beginning of October and the new range coming looks to be very exciting, diverse and eclectic - WARNING: the pink port is lovely, but best not to sample the whole bottle solo and in one sitting!

I thought it might be interesting if we try and follow some key production moments for champagne through these jottings and September is a great time to start - harvest time.  Typically the harvest in Champagne commences during the second week of September.  This year, our main producer is starting on the 10th and thereafter is a frantic 14 days while grapes are cut from the vines by hand, loaded into crates, transported by lorry back to the pressoir at the house, are noted, weighed, pressed and filtered with the resultant juice tagged and bagged (stored in temperature controlled stainless steel tanks while the first mysterious fermentation occurs and those early 8-10 degrees or so of alcohol arrive over the following month).

It always amazes me that the Nomine family’s 22 hectares of vineyards sounds simple enough but in reality aren’t.  It is not just 22 hectares in one place right on the doorstop - making the harvesting element straightforward.  Far from it:  all 30,000 hectares of grapes in the region are harvested in this small time (and hopefully weather) window and most houses have vines spread out all over the area.  The Nomine 22 hectares are no exception with individual plots of vineyard spread right across the Champagne Appellation - some pinot meunier grapes are  grown on slopes in the Marne Valley over 100km away from the house!  The logistic operation of cutting the grapes and getting them back to the house is a marvel in itself.  The 35 hour working week EU directive that is so rigorously observed normally in France is exempted by law during harvest time (how very French!) and itinerant labourers from all over Europe descend on the region to help;  the Nomine family have been fortunate to have a Portuguese team for over thirty years with many of  the same faces still appearing year after year.

Lorries run to and fro all day and most of  the night, bringing their precious cargoes of pinot meunier, pinot noir or chardonnay back to their owners.  There is, obviously, a huge trade in grapes and it is now when the CIVC (Comite Interprofessional du Vin de Champagne - essentially the governing body for champagne wine, responsible for ensuring the quality is always and only perfect and to which all producers must comply, respect and obey) assesses the grape quality which ultimately but indirectly sets the price for the different grape types.  Will LVMH again be looking to buy up every packet of grapes they can, I wonder?   For the increasingly few remaining recoltant producers like Nomine where only the grapes they grow are used in their wines, harvest is the reward for the long months of vineyard toil: clipping, training, pruning, fertilising and generally nurturing.

So, it is quite easy to see why the tagging and bagging of each load of grapes that arrives is so important to the producer.  Not only are the individual grape varieties pressed individually (obviously) but in fact individual grape varieties from individual villages are pressed and stored individually.  This is terroir in action:  chardonnay from slope one in village one shows different characteristics to chardonnay from slope two in village one and in any quality producer’s mind, these unique flavours must be preserved and kept separate - ready for all the excitement of blending.  More of that anon.

And all of this for each and every bottle of champagne - not a lot of people know that!   Do we need any more reason to break out the bubbly?

Is this interesting?  I hope so!  Champagne is an amazing wine.  Harvest is an amazing time and there is so much to say that I can only apologise for all the omissions an aficionado might spot.  If you have any queries or questions, please do contact me directly and I will try and help.

Best wishes

Alastair

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